More lesser known facts

• It is possible to lead a cow upstairs but not downstairs.
• Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters.
• Amount American Airlines saved in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served first class: $40,000.
• City with the most Rolls Royce's per capita: Hong Kong.
• State with the highest percentage of people who walk to work: Alaska
• Percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28%
• Percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38%
• Percentage of American men who say they would marry the same woman if they had it to do all over again: 80%
• Percentage of American women who say they'd marry the same man if they had it to do all over again: 42%
• Cost of raising a medium-size dog to the age of eleven: $6,400
• Average number of people airborne over the US at any given hour: 61,000
• Percentage of Americans who have visited Disneyland/Disney World: 70%
• Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches
• Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
• The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.
• The youngest pope was 11 years old.
• Iceland consumes more Coca-Cola per capita than any other nation.
• First novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer.
• 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.
• The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments.
• The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a  letter is uncopyrightable.
• Did you know that there are coffee flavored PEZ?
• The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of old when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
• The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the "American Pie." (Thus the name of the Don McLean song.)
• When opossums are playing 'possum, they are not "playing." They actually pass out from sheer terror.
• The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.
• Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history.
• • Spades - King David, Clubs - Alexander the Great,
  • Hearts - Charlemagne, and Diamonds - Julius Caesar.
• 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
• Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them would burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired."
• Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2nd, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 years later.
• The term "the whole 9 yards" came from W.W.II fighter pilots in the South Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50  caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo  at a target,it got "the whole 9 yards."
• Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.
• The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from and old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
• An ostrich's eye is bigger that it's brain.
• The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.
• David Prowse was the guy in the Darth Vader suit in Star Wars. He spoke all of Vader's lines, and didn't know that he was going to be dubbed over by James Earl Jones until he saw the screening of the movie.
• In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.
• The name Jeep came from the abbreviation used in the army for the "General Purpose" vehicle, G.P.
• The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.
• The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
• Cat's urine glows under a blacklight.
• The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.
• Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
• If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have 1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.
• The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It To Beaver".
• The only two days of the year in which there are no professional sports games (MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL) are the day before and the day after the Major League all-stars Game.
• Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
• The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan."

Facts proved wrong

No NFL team which plays its home games in a domed stadium has ever won a Superbowl.

Russel states that "in Jan 2000 the St Louis Rams won and they play in a dome"

A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.

A duck's quack does echo.

Average number of days a West German goes without washing his underwear: 7

Stefan says that "The Fact about West Germans not changing their underwear for 7 days is absolutely wrong. I am from West Germany, and I change my underwear every day, and I know of no-one who wears his underwear any longer than 2 days without washing it..."

"I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

The shortest complete sentence in the English language is "Go." The subject is implied in the sentence as it is a command and is, in fact, a complete sentence.

The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.

The idea that 1 mile out of every 5 on the Interstate Highway System has to be straight to serve as an emergency airstrip is false. It would be prohibitively expensive and in many areas probably impossible.

Coca-Cola was originally green.

At no time in Coca-Cola's history has that beverage been green. It was coloured brown from the beginning to hide impurities in any given batch. Coke has at times been bottled in green glass bottles, which perhaps explains the popularity of this particular rumour.

If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

The whole equestrian statue thing has been proven incorrect. Check out www.snopes.com/military/statue.htm for details

Tags: Facts, Miscellaneous

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Comments / Replies

• 

  Russel Says:
  28 September, 2006 at 6:41 am

  your list says that no team that plays in a dome (home) has ever won a Superbowl... but in Jan 2000 the St Louis Rams won and they play in a dome.

• 

  terry Says:
  28 September, 2006 at 1:53 pm

  canada does not have two dollar bills - they are two dollar coins and have a polar bear on the
  front and the queen of england on the back

• 

  Chris Says:
  30 September, 2006 at 8:48 pm

  A duck's quack DOES echo - see the following website:
  
  www.acoustics.salford.ac.uk/acoustics_...k/duck.htm
  
  

• 

  Stefan Says:
  1 October, 2006 at 1:06 am

  The Fact about West Germans not changing their underwear for 7 days is absolutely wrong. I am from West Germany, and I change my underwear every day, and I know of noone who wears his underwear any longer than 2 days without washing it...

• 

  Chris Says:
  1 October, 2006 at 8:34 am

  The shortest complete sentence in the English language is "Go." The subject is implied in the sentence as it is a command and is, in fact, a complete sentence.
  
  The 'rule of thumb' fact is also incorrect. That is a commonly held myth. This site has a good description and examination of the issue - www.wordorigins.org/wordorq.htm (scroll down to the section on 'Rule of Thumb.'

• 

  James Says:
  1 October, 2006 at 6:15 pm

  The whole equestrian statue thing has been proven incorrect. Check out www.snopes.com/military/statue.htm for details

• 

  Melissa Adamaitis Says:
  4 October, 2006 at 3:22 am

  "Go."
  
  THAT is the shortest complete sentence in the english language.
  

• 

  Carl Says:
  12 November, 2006 at 5:05 am

  "Stop!", "Eat!", "Sit!", "Really?" are all one word sentences with "Really?" being the only one that does not have or seem to need an implied subject.

• 

  Ryan Says:
  2 December, 2006 at 1:36 pm

  Actually, "Really?" isn't a sentence. It's just one of those odd colloquialisms that's been used so much that it's generally accepted. That doesn't make it a sentence.
  
  After all, if someone addresses you, you can always confirm with "I?", which is acceptable, but not a sentence. If it were, it'd be the shortest sentence in the language.
  
  Generally, a sentence requires a verb; the subject can be implied, but not the predicate. So the shortest sentence is guaranteed to be a single verb. Since there are no one-letter verbs, "Go." is among the shortest, along with any other two-letter verbs.

• 

  Fin Says:
  6 December, 2007 at 1:40 pm

  Coca Cola was NEVER green.
  
  Green Coke : www.snopes.com/cokelore/green.asp

• 

  Susan Garlick Says:
  7 July, 2008 at 7:41 pm

  Was gonna say about the equestrian statues but see I've been beaten to it - even got the same ref!

• 

  Jussi Herlin Says:
  28 October, 2008 at 12:31 pm

  The Hawaiian language has in fact 13 letters. The glottal stop (often typed as an apostrophe for example in the word "Hawai'i") is a recognized consonant of their alphabet.
  
  Not that I'm Hawaiian though.

• 

  Eric Jones Says:
  28 November, 2008 at 12:09 am

  As for a NFL team that plays in a dome the Dallas Cowboys of the 92, 93, and 95 team won the Super Bowl all 3 years.

• 

  count ludwig Says:
  22 January, 2009 at 5:20 pm

  Surely the whole nine yards refers to the tradition of needing nine yards of material to make a suit. And I don't believe those Kings for a minute - I think they stand for Ramses, Napoleon, Oliver Cromwell and George Washington. The Queen of Hearts was named after Princess Diana.

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