FUN FACTSThere is an Ides in
every month, not just March. The longest speaking
part in Shakespeare is Hamlet with 1,530 lines. Richard
the III is the second longest with 1,164. Bowerbirds of
Australia and New Guinea decorate their courting grounds
with everything from beetle wings to car keys. Since 1600, 109
species and subspecies of birds have become extinct. The letter J does
not appear anywhere on the periodic table of the
elements. Rita Hayworth's real
name was Margarita Casino. The cells which make
up the antlers of a moose are the fastest growing animal
cells in nature. With fourteen, All
About Eve has more Oscar nominations than any
other movie. Windmills always
turn counter-clockwise. Except for the windmills in
Ireland. The largest city in
the U.S. by area is Jacksonville, Florida. The official,
neutral name of Switzerland, which has multiple official
languages, is the latin "Confederatio
Helvetica", or the Helvetic Confederation, thus the
"CH" on license plates and stickers. There were ten
Johns, out of 102 people, on the Mayflower.
Tina Turner's real
name is Annie Mae Bullock. Hydrangeas produce
pink and white flowers in alkaline soil and blue ones in
acidic soil. Dallas, Texas was
named after George M. Dallas, President Polk's veep. Mr. Peanut was
invented in 1916 by a Suffolk, Virginia, schoolchild who
won $5 in a design contest sponsored by Planters Peanuts.
WACO is the only
radio station in the United States that spells out it's
location city. Jackals have one
more pair of chromosomes than dogs or wolves. Basenji dogs and
Australian dingoes are virtually identical. Any number, squared,
is equal to one more than the numbers one either side of
it -- 4x6 is 24, 5x5 is 25. If Brooklyn, New
York became independent of New York City, it would be the
third largest city in the United States, after the
remainder of New York and Los Angeles. The Yellowstone
River is the longest undammed river west of the
Mississippi. An ostrich's eye is
bigger than it's brain. The first two notes
of the Star Spangled Banner are out of beat with the rest
of the song. This is called an anacrusis. The King of Hearts
is the only king without a moustache. Three of the six
former Yugoslav Republics have a coastline on the
Adriatic Sea (Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro) while the
remaining three (Serbia, Bosnia&Herzegovina,
Macedonia) are landlocked. "Vang" is
the most common surname among the Hmong people of Laos. The London
Underground station "St. John's Wood" is the
only such station to not contain any of the letters of
the word "Mackerel. Susan B. Anthony's
middle initial stands for Brownell. The longest
intra-continental flight in the world is from Jeddah,
Saudi Arabia to Manila, Philippines. A Boeing 747's
wingspan is longer than the Wright brothers' first
flight. Hippopotamuses do
eighty percent of their vocalizations under water. When Patty Hearst
was kidnapped, she was watching the TV Show "The
Magician" starring Bill Bixby. The oldest Whiskey
distillery in the world is in Ireland and started
distilling in 1657. Whiskey in Ireland
is spelt with an 'e' before the 'y.' Scottish Whisky (or
Scotch) is spelt without the 'e.' Mississippi is the
only state that has a city named Biloxi. A hedgehog's heart
beats 300 times a minute on average. You can tell a girl
crab from a boy crab by their stomachs. A girl has a
beehive and a boy has a lighthouse. The pH of cow's milk
is 6. Mongeese were
brought to Hawai'i to kill rats. This plan failed because
rats are nocturnal and while the mongoose hunts during
the day. The world's smallest
mammal is the bumblebee bat of Thailand, weighing less
than a penny. Finnish is not a
Germanic, Slavic or Romantic language. It belongs to it's
own language group. The other two languages in the group
are Hungarian and Estonian. The foreign city
most visited by Americans is Tijuana. The two-foot long
bird called a Kea that lives in New Zealand likes to eat
the strips of rubber around car windows. It would take a one
kilogram weight one hour to fall to the bottom of the
Marianas Trench, the deepest part of the ocean (35,839
feet). I, Q, and X are the
only letters that don't start a city that ends in -ville
in the state of Ohio. i.e. Brownsville, Zanesville, etc. The German
Bundestag, or Parliament, has 672 members and is the
world's largest elected legislative body. The billionth digit
of pi is 9. Iowa is the only
state bordered on both east and west entirely by rivers.
(Mississippi on the east, Missouri and Big Sioux on the
west.) The next-to-last
event is the penultimate, and the second-to-last event is
the antepenultimate. Dominica, Mexico,
Zambia, Kiribati, Fiji and Egypt all have birds on their
flags. The Honey Badger can
withstand hundreds of African bee stings that would kill
any other animal. Ancient Egyptians
shaved off their eyebrows to mourn the deaths of their
cats. I, Q, and X are the
only letters that don't start a city that ends in -ville
in the state of Ohio. i.e. Brownsville, Zanesville, etc. Women blink nearly
twice as much as men. Australia is the
richest source of mineral sands in the world. Cyprus has a map on
it's flag. Shannon Hoon, the
now-dead lead singer of the group Blind Melon was a
back-up singer for Guns N' Roses on their Use Your
Illusion 1 CD. The province of
Alberta in Canada has been completely free of rats since
1905. Melanie Griffith's
mother is actress Tippi Hendren, best known for her lead
role in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.
Illinois has the
most personalized liscense plates of any state. The only commercial
fishing vessels in the United States still powered by
sail are the Maryland "skipjacks," sailboats
that dredge for oysters. A state law requires sailpower a
certain distance from shore. Gilroy, California
in Santa Clara County claims to be the "Garlic
Capital of the World," but Fresno County now
produces more Garlic. Fresno County is the
largest agriculture producing county in the United
States. The Dalmatian is the
only dog that gets gout. The newspaper
serving Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, the home of Rocky and
Bullwinkle, is the Picayune Intellegence. A bowling pin need
only tilt 7.5 degrees in order to fall down. The now retired
architect, then a draftsman, wh drew the plans for the
original "Golden Arches" (McDonalds) building
in Fontana, California, in the early 1950s, was Charles
W. Fish. The only person to
be elected to both the baseball and football Hall of
Fames is Cal Hubbard. The movie playing at
the drive-in at the beginning of "The
Flintstones" was the The Monster.
You should not eat a
crawfish with a straight tail. It was dead before it was
cooked. Mongolia is the
largest landlocked contry. The last Playboy
centerfold to have staples was published in 1985. Venice
Kong was the model. Jackie Robinson was
the only person to letter in four sports at UCLA. Of all
of them, he supposedly liked baseball the least. The first Marvel
Comics super hero was the Human Torch. A shank is the part
of the sole between the heel and the ball of the foot.
Also, a shank refers to a steel, plastic or wood piece
inserted in the arch of a shoe. The talus is the
second largest bone in the foot. The Netherlands and
the United States both have national anthems which do not
mention their country's name. The national anthem
of the Netherlands "Het Wilhelmus," is an
'acrostichon.' The first letters of each of the fifteen
verses represent the name "Willem Van Nassov"
(old spelling.) The national anthem
of the Netherlands (Het Wilhelmus) is the oldest national
anthem in the world. The music appeared in 1572, the
lyrics in 1590. The Japanese anthem
has the oldest lyrics/text from the ninth century, but
the music is from 1880. 142857 is a cyclic
number, the numbers of which always appear in the same
order but rotated around when multipled by any number
from 1 to 6. 142857 * 2 = 285714 142857 * 3 = 428571
142857 * 4 = 571428 142857 * 5 = 714285 142857 * 6 =
857142 The only four
countries that start with the letter "D" are
Denmark, Djibouti, Dominica and the Dominican Republic. The Dominican
Republic was called Santo Domingo when it first gained
independance. The part of Denmark
which is a penninsula is called Jutland. Theodore Roosevelt
was the first American President to win the Nobel Peace
Prize. He won for his arbitration of treaty discussions
at the end of the Russo-Japanese War. Olympus Mons on Mars
is the largest volcano in our solar system. All the moons of the
Solar System are named after Greek and Roman mythology,
except the moons of Uranus, which are named after
Shakesperean charcters. King Kong
is the first movie to have its sequel (Son of
Kong) released the same year (1933). Devon is the only
county in Great Britain to have two coasts. Look at the number
four on a clock face that uses Roman numerals. If the
clock is made correctly then the Roman numeral four is
wrong. The standard and correct way to write the Roman
numeral four is "IV," but the traditional way
to show it on a clock face is "IIII." Legend
has it that a clock was made for a British king. When he
saw the clock he mis- informedly corrected the clock
maker who re-did the clock face to show a
"IIII" instead of an "IV" thus not
risking offending the king. Other clock makers followed
suit so as not to embarass the king. Now it is the
traditional way to make clocks. Johnny Carson was
born in Corning, Iowa and grew up in Norfolk, Nebraska. The real name of the
Looney Tunes music is "The Merry-Go-Round Broken
Down." The Yale Crew team
was the first college sports team, started in 1843. The
Yale-Harvard crew race was the first, and the
longest-running American intercollegiate sports event.
The first race was held in 1852. "Rhythms"
and "syzygy" are the longest English words
without vowels. The Yuengling
Brewery in Pottsville, Pennsylvania founded in 1829 is
the oldest in the United States. The 'v' in the name
of a court case does not stand for 'versus', but for
'and' (in civil proceedings) or 'against' (in criminal
proceedings). In a tradition
dating to the begining of the Westminster system of
government, the bench in the middle of a Westminster
parliarment is 2 1/2 sword lengths long. This was so the
government and oppositon couldn't have a go at each other
if it all got a bit heated! Pennsylvania was the
first colony to legalize witchcraft. New York City is
nicknamed the Big Apple after an early swing dance that
originated in a South Carolina club (actually a converted
church) called The Big Apple. The bubbles in
Guiness Beer sink to the bottom rather than float to the
top like all other beers. No one knows why. Cats can hear
ultrasound. The word for
"name" in Japanese is "na-ma-e," in
Mongolian "nameg." The many sights that
represent the Chinese city of Beijing were built by
foreigners: the Forbidden City was built by the Mongols,
the Temple of Heaven by the Manchurians. The distance between
an alligator's eyes, in inches, is directly proportional
to the length of the alligator, in feet. Beaver Cleaver's
locker number was #9. The Sumatran tiger
has the most stripes of all the tiger subspecies, and the
Siberian tiger has the fewest stripes. A tiger's paw prints
are called pug marks. Kiwi birds are
blind, they hunt by smell. All Hebrew
orignating names that end with the letters "el"
have something to do with God. The national
religion of Scotland is Presbyterianism. The closest relative
to the manatee is the elephant, scientists think the
elephant crawled back into the sea to become a manatee. All elephants walk
on tip-toe, because the back portion of their foot is
made up of all fat and no bone. George Harrison
knows how to play the sitar. "Toki doki
kuruma de kayotte imasu" means "Sometimes I
commute by car." in Japanese. Giraffes have no
vocal chords. The lifespan of a
tastebud is ten days. A fullgrown bear can
run as fast as a horse. A H I M O T U V W X
Y are the symmetric capital letters in the Roman
alphabet. i l o t u v w x are
the symmetric lower case letters in the Roman alphabet. Susan Sarandon's
last name is from her first husband, Chris Sarandon, also
known as Prince Humperdinck from The Princess
Bride. In order for a deck
of cards to be mixed up enough to play with properly, it
should be shuffled at least seven times. The Eygptian god of
the moon and knowledge, Thoth, has the head of an ibis. Tweety used to be a
baby bird without feathers until the censors made him
have feathers because he "looked naked." The Mola Mola, or
Ocean Sunfish, lays up to 5,000,000 eggs at one time. Craven Walker
invented the lava lamp, and its contents are colored wax
and water. Aerosmith's
"Dude Looks Like a Lady" was written about
Vince Neil of Motley Crue. Vanilla Ice's real
name is Robert Van Winkle. When opossums are
playing opossum, they are not "playing." They
actually pass out from sheer terror. 2 and 5 are the only
primes that end in 2 or 5. 1 and 2 are the only
numbers where they are the values of the numbers of
factors they have. Switching letters is
called spoonerism. For example, saying jag of Flapan,
instead of flag of Japan. The abbrevation
"PDX" (Portland International Airport) is
derived from "P" standing for Portland and
"DX" meaning long distance or wide reaching. Every male over the
18 is considered part of the Arizona Militia according to
state constitution. Liquid paper was
invented by Mike Nesmith (of the Monkees)'s mother, Bette
Nesmith Graham, in 1951. A man named Ed
Peterson is the inventor of the Egg McMuffin. Stag beetles have
stronger mandibles than humans. The record for most
snowfall in a day, 78 inches, was made on February 7,
1916 in Alaska. In an episode of The
Simpsons, Sideshow Bob's Criminal Number is
24601, the same as the Criminal number of Jean Valjean in
Les Miserables. Felix the Cat is the
first cartoon character to ever have been made into a
ballooon for a parade. More money is
printed daily for the Monopoly game than by the U.S.
Treasury. The only continent
without reptiles or snakes is Antarctica. It is possible to
lead a cow upstairs but not downstairs, because a cows'
knees can't bend properly to walk back down. A golden razor
removed from King Tut's Tomb was still sharp enough to be
used. You can make a glass
of apple cider with three apples. All gondolas in
Venice, Italy must be painted black, unless they belong
to a high official. The word
"karate" means "empty hand." A standard grave is
7'8" x 3'2" x 6" Howdy Doody had
forty-eight freckles. There is a city
called Rome on every continent. More Hollywood films
have been made about boxing than about any other sport. Rhinos are in the
same family as horses, and are thought to have inspired
the myth of the unicorn. Hudson Bay is the
largest bay in the world, (larger than England) bordering
only one country Canada, and only two provinces and a
territory. Four people played
Darth Vader: David Prowse was his body, James Earl Jones
did the voice, Sebastian Shaw was his face and a fourth
person did the breathing. The stress in
Hungarian words always falls on the first syllable. A 17th-century
Swedish philologist claimed that in the Garden of Eden
God spoke Swedish, Adam spoke Danish, and the serpent
spoke French. The word for
"dog" in the Australian aboriginal language
Mbabaran happens to be "dog." The first Bowie
knife was forged at Washington, Arkansas. The names of the
three wise monkeys are: Mizaru: See no evil, Mikazaru:
Hear no evil, and Mazaru: Speak no evil. The name of the
asteroid that was believed to have killed the dinosaurs
was named Chixalub. (Pronounced Sheesh-uh-loob) John Wilkes Booth
shot Lincoln in a theatre and was found in a warehouse.
Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and was
found in a theatre. Dismas and Gestas
were the names of the two thieves crucified with Jesus. The Red Baron's real
name was Manfred Von Richtofen. Santa Fe, New Mexico
is the highest state capital at 7,000 feet above sea
level. Sante Fe is also the
only State Capital with no regularly scheduled commercial
airline service. Santa Fe was founded
in 1607 making it the oldest continuously occupied state
capital. Stewardesses and
reverberated are the two longest words (12 letters each)
that can be typed using on the left hand. Skepticisms is the
longest word that alternates hands. Sam Spade's license
number was 137596. A hamlet is a
village without a church and a town is not a city until
it has a cathedral. Nine pennies weigh
exactly one ounce. Alaska could hold
the 21 smallest States The sport with
highest ratio of officials to participants is tennis. A
singles match should have 13; ten linesmen, one net, one
foot-fault, plus an umpire. 49.6% of US
residents live in Eastern time zone, 29.3% live in the
Central time zone, 5.3% live in the Mountain time zone,
15.0% live in the Pacific time zone and .8% live in any
other time zone. Camels have three
eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand. It takes forty
minutes to hard boil an ostrich egg. There are 2,598,960
five-card hands possible in a 52-card deck of cards. There are
1,929,770,126,028,800 different color combinations
possible on a Rubik's Cube. Pecans are the only
food that astranauts do not have to treat and dehydrate
when flying in space. Ross Perot resigned
from the General Motors Board of Directors because of the
decision to purchase Hughes Aircraft Company. Figlet, an ASCII
font converter program, stands for Frank,
Ian and Glenn's
LETters. Decatur, Illinois
was the original home of what is now the Chicago Bears
(then the Stalley Bears.) Every Swiss citizen
is required by law to have a bomb shelter or access to a
bomb shelter. Brazoria County in
Southeast Texas is the only county in the United States
and Canada to have every kind of poisonous snake found in
those two countries. The ancient
Etruscans painted women white and men red in the wall
paintings they used to decorate tombs. Texas is also the
only state that is allowed to fly its state flag at the
same height as the U.S. flag. In 1986 Danny Heep
became the first player in a World Series to be a
designated hitter (DH) with the initials "D.H."
Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania is the only city in the U.S. with three
sports teams that all wear the same colors. Plaster of Paris is
naturally fire retardant. At about 600 degrees Farenheit
the chemical water that is stored in it is released. This
is also why walls are often "sweaty" after a
fire. Al Capone's famous
scar (which earned him the nickname "Scarface")
was from an attack. The brother of a girl he had insulted
attacked him with a knife, leaving him with the three
distinctive scars. Before Prohibition,
Shiltz Brewery own more property in Chicago than anyone
else, except The Catholic Church. If you put a raisin
in a glass of champagne, it will keep floating to the top
and sinking to the bottom. Dwarf Woolly
Mammoths survived on Wrangel Island, Alaska as late as
4000 years ago. (So the oldest organism currently alive
was 1000 years old when the last Woolly Mammoth died.) National Pi Day is
March 14, at 1:59. (3/14 1:59) The saguaro cactus,
found in the southwestern united states, does not grow
branches until it is about sixty to seventy-five years
old. Kermit the Frog is
left handed. The average mousepad
is eight and three quarters by seven and a half inches. Shortest
Intercontinental Commercial Flight in the world is from
Gibraltar (Europe) to Tangier (Africa.) Distance 34
miles, flight time 20 minutes. In the game
Monopoly, the most money you can lose in one travel
around the board (normal game rules, going to jail only
once) is $26,040. The most money you can lose in one turn
is $5070. Pamela Anderson Lee
is Canada's Centennial Baby, being the first baby born on
the centennial anniversiary of Canada's independence. In ancient Egypt,
the apricot was called the "egg of the sun." Non-dairy creamer is
flammable. Tommy
Lee Jones Fun Facts Tommy Lee Jones is
one of Oliver's roommates in the movie Love
Story. He was Tom then. Tommy Lee Jones and
Al Gore were freshman roommates at Harvard. A bonnet is the cap
on the fire hydrant. A canton is the blue
field behind the stars. The bread slots in a
toaster are toast wells. The side of a hammer
is a cheek. Only two countries
border three oceans -- the United States & Canada. The quartz crystal
in your wristwatch vibrates 32,768 times a second. The two most common
surgeries are biopsies and cesarean sections. Dr. Seuss and Kurt
Vonnegut went to college together. They were even in the
same fraternity, where Seuss decorated the fraternity
house walls with drawings of his characters. Drinking water after
eating reduces the acid in your mouth by 61 percent. Paris, France and
Cedar Rapids, Iowa are the only cities in the world that
have their governments on an island. Pro golfer Wayne
Levi was the first PGA pro to win a tournament using a
colored (orange) ball. He did it in the Hawaiian Open in
1982. The author of Roberts'
Rules of Order, Col. Roberts of the U. S.
Corps of Engineers, is also famous as the engineer in
charge of designing the Seawall in Galveston, Texas. This
Seawall was constructed after the famous hurricane of
1900 which hit Galveston, killing thousands. The bat on the
Bacardi symbol is there because the soil where the sugar
cane grows is fertile from the excessive guano (bat
droppings.) A lion's roar can be
heard from five miles away. If you can see a
rainbow you must have your back to the sun. If you don't,
you can't see it. The cheetah is the
only cat in the world that can't retract it's claws. The Toronto Maple
leafs used to be called the Toronto Arenas, then the St.
Patricks and finally the Maple Leafs. A female swine, or a
sow, will always have a even number of teats or nipples,
usually twelve. Although Sherlock
Holmes above all is considered as an inhabitant of
Victorian London, not less than seven stories take place
after the death of the late queen. They are: The Priory
School (early 20th C), The Three Garridebs (1902), The
Blanced Soldier (1903), The Illustrious Client (1903),
The Creeping Man (1903), The Lion's Mane (1907), His Last
Bow (1914.) Only two stories
have Sherlock himself as the narrator. They are: The
Blanched Soldier (1903) and The Lion's Mane (1907.) It is commonly
thought that Conan Doyle got his knighthood because of
his stories about Sherlock Holmes. He didn't. In fact he
got his honour because of his defence (in pamphlets and
newspaper articles) of the British concentration camps
during the Boer War. The hammer throw is
illegal as a high school sport in all states except Rhode
Island. Grand Rapids,
Michigan was the first city in the US to put flouride in
their water. 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. St. Stephen is the
patron saint of bricklayers. The first song
played on Armed Forces Radio during operation Desert
Shield was Rock the Casba by the Clash. It's rumored that
sucking on a copper penny will cause a breath- alyzer to
read 0. Fabrics and
their Origins There are only three
cities that are named exactly after the state they are
located in: Maine, ME; New York, NY; and Wyoming, WY. Worcestershire Sauce
is basically an Anchovy ketchup. If you told someone
that they were one in a million, you'd be saying there
were about 1,800 of them in China. A duck's quack
doesn't echo, and no one knows why. In Psycho, the color
of Mrs. Bates' dress was periwinkle blue. The Roman numerals
for 1666 are as follows: MDCLXVI
(1000+500+100+50+10+5+1.) This year is famous as being
the one time in history when the date is written with all
of the Roman numerals from highest value to the lowest
value. Until at least 1980
the country of Bhutan had no telephones. The average sixty
minute audio cassette tape has 562.5 feet of tape in it. 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. A group of geese on
the ground is gaggle, a group of geese in the air is
skein. The smallest
'country' in the world to have its own top-level domain
name is Norfolk Island, off the coast of Australia. Napoleon Bonaparte's
mother's name was Laticia. Tirana and Dublin
are the only remaining European capitals with
undergrounds. The 16th century
astronomer Tycho Brahe lost his nose in a duel with one
of his students over a mathematical computation. He wore
a silver replacement nose for the rest of his life. Prince Harry and
Prince William are uncircumcised. Dogs and humans are
the only animals with prostates. he ashes of the
average cremated person weigh nine pounds. The placement of a
donkey's eyes in its' heads enables it to see all four
feet at all times The only word that
consists of two letters, each used three times is the
word "deeded." Walt Disney named
Mickey Mouse after Mickey Rooney, whose mother he dated
for some time. Libra, the Scales,
is the only inanimate symbol in the zodiac. The word
"robot" was created by Karel Capek. It came
from Czech/Slovak "robotovat," which means to
work very hard.
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