FUN FACTS


There is an Ides in every month, not just March.
Try dividing 81 into 99999999999.

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.
The word "lethologica" describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.

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
Calico --- Calicut, India
Cambric --- Cambrai, France
Chambray --- Cambrai, France
Damask --- Damascus, Syria
Denim --- Nimes, France
Gauze --- Gaza, Palestine
Jersey --- Jersey Islamd, U.K.
Lisle --- Lille, France
Madras --- Madras, India
Oxford Cloth --- Oxford, U.K.
Tweed --- Tweed River Valley, U.K.

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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