Strange Facts 3

[Steven Pusateri]

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. No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver and purple. Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them use to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired." Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village". There are two credit cards for every person in the United States. Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 years later. "I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language. The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WWII 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." The most common name in the world is Mohammed. The word "samba" means "to rub navels together." The international telephone dialing code for Antarctica is 672. The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher. Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots. Until 1965, driving was done on the left-hand side on roads in Sweden. The conversion to right-hand was done on a weekday at 5pm. All traffic stopped as people switched sides. This time and day were chosen to prevent accidents where drivers would have gotten up in the morning and been too sleepy to realize that *this* was the day of the changeover. The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo. Dr. Seuss pronounced "Seuss" such that it rhymed with "rejoice." In Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart never said "Play it again, Sam." Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson." More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes. The term, "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" is from Ancient Rome. The only rule during wrestling matches was, "No eye gouging." Everything else was allowed, but the only way to be disqualified was to poke someone's eye out. A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second. Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt. Money isn't made out of paper, it's made out of cotton. Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie. The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an 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. A pregnant goldfish is called a twit. A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes. It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws up it's stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of it's mouth. Then the frog uses it's forearms to dig out all of the stomach's contents and then swallows the stomach back down again. White Out was invented by the mother of Mike Nesmith (Formerly of the Monkees). In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak. 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 about eight floors for the cat to realize what is occurring, relax and correct itself. Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks: otherwise it will digest itself. 101 Dalmatians and Peter Pan (Wendy) are the only two Disney cartoon features with both parents that are present and don't die throughout the movie. 'Stewardesses' is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand. A whale's penis is called a dork. To escape the grip of a crocodile's jaws, push your thumbs into its eyeballs-it will let you go instantly. Reindeer like to eat bananas. The average person falls asleep in seven minutezzzzzzzzzzzz.......... Coca-Cola was originally green. Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the US Treasury It is possible to lead a cow upstairs but not downstairs. Smartest dogs: 1) Scottish border collie; 2) Poodle; 3) Golden Retriever. Dumbest: Afghan hound. Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters. Men can read smaller print than women; women can hear better. 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% Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33 Average number of days a West German goes without washing his underwear: 7 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: 50% Cost of raising a medium-size dog to the age of eleven: $6,400 Average number of people airborne over the US 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. Only President to win a Pulitzer: John F. Kennedy for Profiles in Courage 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. A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why. 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. Hang On Sloopy is the official rock song of Ohio. Did you know that there are coffee flavored PEZ? 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. 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, Diamonds - Julius Caesar. 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. 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. No NFL team which plays its home games in a domed stadium has ever won a Superbowl. 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." Alaska could hold the 21 smallest States Before Prohibition, Shlitz Brewery owned 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. Kermit the Frog is left-handed. Non-dairy creamer is flammable. The car in the foreground on the back of a $10 bill is a 1925 Hupmobile. Dr. Seuss and Kurt Vonnegut went to college together. They were even in the same fraternity, where Seuss decorated the fraternity house walls with 20 drawings of his characters. If you can see a rainbow you must have your back to the sun. If you don't, you can't see it. It's rumored that sucking on a copper penny will cause a breathalyzer to read 0. Dogs and humans are the only animals with prostates. The highest scoring word in the English language game of Scrabble is 'Quartzy'. This will score 164 points if played across a red triple-word square with the Z on a light blue double-letter square. It will score 162 points if played across two pink double-word squares with the Q and the Y on those squares. 'Bezique' and Cazique' are next with a possible 161 points. All three words score an extra 50 points for having seven letters and therefore emptying the letter rack in one go. Assuming Rudolph was in front, there are 40,320 ways to arrange the other eight reindeer. The dial tone of a normal telephone is in the key of "F". The fingerprints of koala bears are virtually indistinguishable from those of humans, so much so that they could be confused at a crime scene. In the four major US professional sports (baseball, basketball, football, and hockey), there are only seven teams whose nicknames do not end with an "S:" Basketball: The Miami Heat, The Utah Jazz, The Orlando Magic. Baseball: The Boston Red Sox, The Chicago White Sox. Hockey: The Colorado Avalanche, The Tampa Bay Lightning. Football: None. Beelzebub, another name for the devil, is Hebrew for Lord of the Flies, and this is where the book's title comes from. It is believed that Shakespeare was 46 around the time that the King James Version of the Bible was written. In Psalms 46, the 46th word from the first word is shake and the 46th word from the last word is spear. The ship, the Queen Elizabeth 2, should always be written as QE2. QEII is the actual queen. There were no squirrels on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts until 1989. The correct response to the Irish greeting, "Top of the morning to you, " is "and the rest of the day to yourself." The Les Nessman character on the TV series WKRP in Cincinnati wore a bandaid in every episode, either on himself, his glasses, or his clothing. Columbia University is the second largest landowner in New York City, after the Catholic Church. When the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers play football at home to a sellout crowd, the stadium becomes the state's third largest city. John Larroquette of "NightCourt" and "The John Larroquette Show" was he narrator of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." In 1963, baseball pitcher Gaylord Perry remarked, "They'll put a man on the moon before I hit a home run." On July 20, 1969, a few hours after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Gaylord Perry hit his first, and only, home run. Gilligan of Gilligan's Island had a first name that was only used once, on the never-aired pilot show. His first name was Willy. 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. When Saigon fell, the signal for all Americans to evacuate was Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" being played on the radio. The pet ferret (Mustela putorias furo) was domesticated more than 500 years before the house cat. The dome on Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home, conceals a billiards room. In Jefferson's day, billiards were illegal in Virginia. The term "devil's advocate" comes from the Roman Catholic church. When 20 of the church's most important convene in deciding if someone should be sainted, a devil's advocate is always appointed to give an alternative view. The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Uses every letter in the alphabet. (Developed by Western Union to Test telex/twx communications) 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321 In Cleveland, Ohio, it's illegal to catch mice without a hunting license. It takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year's supply of footballs. Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married. There are an average of 178 sesame seeds on a McDonald's Big Mac bun. The world's termites outweigh the world's humans 10 to 1. Pound for pound, hamburgers cost more than new cars. The 3 most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca- Cola, and Budweiser in that order. When Heinz ketchup leaves the bottle, it travels at a rate of 25 miles per year. The Bible has been translated into Klingon. Humans are the only primates that don't have pigment in the palms of their hands. Ten percent of the Russian government's income comes from the sale of vodka. On average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens every year. In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all the world's nuclear weapons combined. Reno, Nevada is west of Los Angeles, California. Average age of top GM executives in 1994: 49.8 years. Average age of theRolling Stones: 50.6. Elephants can't jump. Every other mammal can. The cigarette lighter was invented before the match. Five Jell-O flavors that flopped: celery, coffee, cola, apple, and chocolate. Evil fine print: for any funny images on the web. go to www.beefgir.com/ For all old jokes go to http://groups.google.com/group/BeefGir