useless facts

[CD5Passion]

Here are some useless facts that you may enjoy...

The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched."
On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament
Building is an American flag.
Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33.
All of the clocks in Pulp Fiction are stuck on 4:20.
No word in the English language rhymes with month.
A coat hanger is 44 inches long if straightened
Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village".
"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".
The word 'byte' is a contraction of 'by eight.'
The word 'pixel' is a contraction of either 'picture cell' or 'picture
element.'
Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-decimal
category.
Cat's urine glows under a blacklight.
The average ear of corn has eight-hundred kernels arranged in sixteen
rows.
The first Ford cars had Dodge engines.
Chrysler built B-29's that bombed Japan, Mitsubishi built Zeros that
tried to shoot them down. Both companies now build cars in a joint
plant call Diamond Star.
On the new hundred dollar bill the time on the clock tower of
Independence Hall is 4:10.
All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the
back of the $5 bill.
Almonds are members of the peach family.
If you add up the numbers 1-100 consecutively (1+2+3+4+5 etc) the total
is 5050
The symbol on the "pound" key (#) is called an octothorpe.
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 maximum weight for a golf ball is 1.62 oz.
The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle.
Duddley DoRight's Horses name was "Horse."
Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain was born on a day in 1835 when Haley's Comet
came into veiw. When He died in 1910, Haley's Comet came into view again.
Ethernet is a registered trademark of Xerox, Unix is a registered
trademark of AT&T.
The first hard drive available for the Apple ][ had a capacity of
5megabytes.
In many cases, the amount of storage space on a recordable CD is
measured in minutes. 74 minutes is about 650 megabytes, 63 minutes is
550 megabytes.
Charlie Brown's father was a barber.
Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intraveinously
Of the six men who made up the Three Stooges, three of them were real
brothers (Moe, Curly and Shemp.)
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.
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.
Only 1/3 of the people that can twitch their ears can twitch only one
at a time.
The volume of the Earth's moon is the same as the volume of the Pacific
Ocean
Ingrown toenails are hereditary.
Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.
The largest city in the United States with a one syllable name is
Flint, Michigan.
The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
On the cartoon show 'The Jetsons', Jane is 33 years old and her
daughter Judy is 15.
In Mel Brooks' 'Silent Movie,' mime Marcel Marceau is the only person
who has a speaking role.
Only humans and horses have hymens.
The word "set" has more definitions than any other word in the English
language.
The state with the longest coastline in the US is Michigan.
We will have four consecutive full moons making two blue moons in 1999
(January 2 and 31, March 2 and 31.) The only other time it happened
this
century was in 1915 (January 1 and 31, March 1 and 31.)
Pulp Fiction cost $8 million to make - $5 million going to actor's
salaries.
Spot, Data's cat on Star Trek: The Next Generation , was played by
six different cats.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard's fish was named Livingston.
The longest U.S. highway is route 6 starting in Cape Cod, Massachusetts
going through 14 states, and ending in Bishop, California...
The 'y' in signs reading "ye olde.." is properly pronounced with a 'th'
sound, not 'y'. The "th" sound does not exist in Latin, so ancient Roman
occupied (present day) England use the rune "thorn" to represent "th"
sounds. With the advent of the printing press the character from the
Roman alphabet which closest resembled thorn was the lower case "y".
The number of the trash compactor in Star Wars (20th Century Fox, 1977)
is 3263827.
"Underground" is the only word in the English language that begins and
ends with the letters "und."
The international telphone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.
A full seven percent of the entire Irish barley crop goes to the
production of Guinness beer.
If you toss a penny 10000 times, it will not be heads 5000 times, but
more like 4950. The heads picture weighs more, so it ends up on the bottom.
The housefly hums in the middle octave, key of F.
Mr. Snuffleupagas' first name was Alyoisus.
The little bags of netting for gas lanterns (called 'mantles') are
radioactive-so much so that they will set of an alarm at a nuclear
reactor.
In the movie "the Right Stuff" there is a scene where a government
recruiter for the Mercury astronaut program (played by Jeff Goldblum)is
in a bar at Muroc Dry Lake, California. His partner suggests Chuck
Yeager as a good astronaut candidate. Jeff proceeds to badmouth Yeager
claiming they need someone who went to college. During the
conversation the real Chuck Yeager is playing a bartender who is
standing behind the recruiters eavesdropping. General Yeager is listed
low in the movie credits as 'Fred.'
Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.
There are only four words in the English language which end in
"-dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford
English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
The only other word with the same amount of letters is
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, its plural.
The longest place-name still in use is
Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapiki maungahoronukupokaiwh
enuakita
natahu, a New Zealand hill.
Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los
Angeles de Porciuncula" and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size,
"L.A."
A cat has 32 muscles in each ear
An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain.
Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
After the Civil War the U.S. sued Great Britain for damages that were
caused by them building ships for the Confederacy. We originally asked
for $1 billion but settled on $25 Million.
There are 22 stars surrounding the mountain on the Paramount Pictures
logo.
Deborah Winger did the voice of E.T.
There is a word in the English language with only one vowel, which
occurs six times: Indivisibility.
In most advertisments, including newspapers, the time displayed on a
watch is 10:10.
The only Dutch word to contain eight consecutive consonants is
'angstschreeuw'.
Alfred Hitchcock didn't have a belly button. It was eliminated when he
was sewn up after surgery.
The Mongol emperor Genghis Khan's original name was Temujin.
The first word spoken by an ape in the movie Planet of the Apes was
"Smile".
Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order.
Geller and Huchra have made three-dimensional maps of the distrubution
of galaxies. In each layer of the map some galaxies are grouped
together in such a way that they resemble a human being.
Telly Savalas and Louis Armstrong died on their birthdays.
Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.
Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
The second longest word in the English language is
"antidisestablishmenterianism".
When two words are combined to form a single word (e.g., motor + hotel
= motel, breakfast + lunch = brunch) the new word is called a
"portmanteau."
Dr. Samuel 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 muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint - no two lions have the same
pattern of whiskers.
In 1969, the last Corvair was painted gold.
The real name of the "I've fallen and I can't get up" lady is Edith
Fore.
Betsy Ross was born with a fully formed set of teeth.
Betsy Ross's other contribution to the American Revolution, beside
sewing the first American flag, was running a munitions factory in her
basement.
The only real person to be a Pez head was Betsy Ross.
Steely Dan got their name from a sexual device depicted in the book
'The Naked Lunch'.
Bob Dylan's real name is Robert Zimmerman.
Wilma Flinestone's maiden name was Wilma Slaghoopal, and Betty Rubble's
Maiden name was Betty Jean Mcbricker.
Lenny Kravitz's mother played the part of "Helen" on "The Jeffersons."
Grapes explode when you put them in the microwave.
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 phaoroh Ramses II who
fathered over 160 children.
There is a seven letter word in the English language that contains ten
words without rearranging any of its letters, "therein": the, there, he,
in, rein, her, here, here, ere, therein, herein.
Canola oil is actually grapeseed oil but the name was changed in Canada
for marketing reasons.
When the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers play football at home, the
stadium becomes the state's third largest city.
Duelling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered
blood donors.
John Larroquette of "Night Court" and "The John Larroquette Show" was
the narrator of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."
A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.
A pig's penis is shaped like a corkscrew.
The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert
the
cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "Its A Wonderful Life"
A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.
A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
A quarter has 119 grooves around the edge.
A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
On an American one-dollar bill, there is an owl in the upper left-hand
corner of the "1" encased in the "shield" and a spider hidden in the
front upper right-hand corner.
No words in the English language rhyme with orange, silver or purple.
It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
"Evian" spelled backvards is naive.
The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.
Maine is the toothpick capital of the world.
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.
The A&W of root beer fame stands for Allen and Wright.
A baby eel is called an elver, a baby oyster is called a spat.
Bingo is the name of the dog on the Cracker Jack box.
Lake Nicaragua boasts the only fresh-water sharks in the entire world.
Charles de Gaulle's final words were, "It hurts."
There are four cars and ten lightposts on the back of a ten-dollar bill.
ABBA got their name by taking the first letter from each of theirfirst
names (Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny, Anni-frid.)
What five digit number, when multiplied by the number 4, is the same
number with the digits in reverse order? 21978; 21978 x 4 = 87912.
It was illegal to sell ET dolls in France because there is a law
against selling dolls without human faces.
In the 1983 film "JAWS 3D" the shark blows up. Some of the shark guts
were the stuffed ET dolls being sold at the time.
Montana mountain goats will butt heads so hard their hooves fall off.
The Beatles song "Dear Prudence" was written about Mia Farrow's sister,
Prudence, when she wouldn't come out and play with Mia and the Beatles
at a religious retreat in India.
Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully ripened
cranberry can be dribbled like a basketball.
The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.
St. Paul, Minnesota was originally called Pigs Eye after a man who ran
a saloon there.
The numbers '172' can be found on the back of the U.S. $5 dollar bill
in the bushes at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.
Moon was Buzz Aldrin's mother's maiden name. (Buzz Aldrin was the
second man on the moon in 1969.)
Who's that playing the piano on the "Mad About You" theme? It's Paul
Reiser himself.. And Greg Evigan sang the "My Two Dads" theme.
Kelsey Grammar sings and plays the piano for the theme song of Fraiser.
Alan Thicke, the father in the TV show Growing Pains wrote the theme
songs for The Facts of Life and Diff'rent Strokes .
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.