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 Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 1:07 pm
The Amazon rain forest produces half the world's oxygen supply.
Tomb robbers believed that knocking Egyptian sarcophagi's noses off would stall curses.
Trivia is the Roman goddess of sorcery, hounds and... the crossroads
The physically smallest post office in the United States is in Ochopee,
Florida in the heart of the everglades.
The allele for six fingers and toes is dominant in humans.
Some biblical scholars believe that Aramaic (the language of the ancient Bible) did not contain an easy way to say "many things" and used a term which has come down to us as 40. This means that when the bible -- in many places -- refers to "40 days," they meant many days.
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Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2008 9:14 am
There are eight different sizes of champagne bottles and the largest is called a Nebuchadnezzar (after the Biblical king who put Daniel's three friends into the oven).
Turnips turn green when sunburnt.
In 1969, the last Corvair to come off the assembly line was painted gold.
Native speakers of Japanese learn Spanish much more easily than they learn English. Native speakers of English learn Spanish much more easily than they learn Japanese.
All the dirt from the foundation to build the World Trade Center in NYC was dumped into the Hudson River to form the community now known as Battery City Park,
Each day the World Trade Center Towers in New York burn enough electricity to supply a U.S. city of one hundred thousand people.
The Holland and Lincoln Tunnels under the Hudson River connecting New Jersey and New York are an engineering feat. The air circulators in the tunnels circulate fresh air completely every ninety seconds!
The Soviet Sukhoi-34 is the first strike fighter with a toilet in it.
The only social fraternity founded during the Civil War was Theta Xi fraternity, at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York in 1864.
The Hudson River along the island of Manhattan flows in either direction depending upon the tide.
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Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 10:06 am
Several buildings in Manhattan have their own zip code! The World Trade Center has several.
The "heat" of peppers is rated on the Scoville scale.
Ketchup was once used as a medicine in the United States. In the 1830s it was sold as Dr. Miles's Compound Extract of Tomato.
Ben and Jerry's send the waste from making ice cream to local pig farmers to use as feed. Pigs love the stuff, except for one flavor: Mint Oreo.
According to the ceremonial customs of Orthodox Judaism, it is officially sundown when you cannot tell the difference between a black thread and a red one.
In most advertisements, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10 because then the hands of the watch frame the brand name on the watch face.
The number of minutes of telephone calling in an average business day is 9,500,000,000.
There are currently more than thirty thousand people in the United States that are one hundred years of age or older.
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Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 10:37 am
Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
The longest time someone has typed on a typewriter continuously is 264 hrs., set by Violet Gibson Burns.
US Airlines owes their passengers 870,000,000,000 frequent flyer miles.
The average number of passengers airborne over the US each hour is 61,000.
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.
A full seven percent of the entire Irish barley crop goes to the production of Guinness beer.
In medieval England beer was often served with breakfast. Source: "2201 Fascinating Facts "
The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
Everytime you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
Images for picture stamps in the United States are commissioned by the United States Postal Service Department of Philatelic Fulfillment.
Great Britain was the first country to issue postage stamps. Hence, the postage stamps of Britain are the only stamps in the world not to bear the name of the country of origin. However, every stamp carries a relief image or a silhouette of the monarch's head instead.
The housefly hums in the middle octave, key of F.
The international telphone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.
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Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 11:11 am
Each year there is one ton of cement poured for each man, woman, and child in the world.
At McDonalds in New Zealand, they serve apricot pies instead of cherry ones.
Pickled herrings were invented in 1375.
The earliest document in Latin in a woman's handwriting (it is from the first century A.D.) is an invitation to a birthday party.
A family of six died in Oregon during WW II as a result of a Japanese balloon bomb.
Jet lag was once called boat lag, back before jets existed.
The world's second largest pipe organ is located at the Organ Grinder on 82nd Avenue in Portland, Oregon.
Games Slayter, a Purdue graduate, invented fiberglass.
One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today is because cotton growers in the 30s lobbied against hemp farmers -- they saw it as competition. It is not chemically addictive as is nicotine, alcohol, or caffeine.
The Basset Horn, a kind of alto clarinet, was named after its inventor -- a man named Horn. "Basset" is from "Basetto," or "little bass" in Italian.
Cephalacaudal recapitulation is the reason our extremeties develop faster than the rest of us
The term the "Boogey Man will get you" comes from the Boogey people, who still inhabit an area of Indonesia. These people still act as pirates today and attack ships that pass. Thus the term spread "if you don't watch out the Boogey man will get you."
In-grown toe nails are hereditary.
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Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 11:56 am
The "chapters" of the New Testament were not there originally. When monks in medieval times translated it from the Greek, they numbered the pages in each "book."
Yucatan, as in the peninsula, is from Maya "u" + "u" + "uthaan," meaning "listen to how they speak," what the Mayasaid when they first heard the Spaniards.
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.
Only 1/3 of the people that can twitch their ears can twitch only one at a time.
If you lace your shoes from the inside to the outside the fit will be snugger around your big toe.
Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously
Carbonated water, with nothing else in it, can dissolve limestone, talc, and many other low-Moh's hardness minerals. Coincidentally, carbonated water is the main ingredient in soda pop.
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Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 12:16 pm
If you were born in Los Alamos, New Mexico during the Manhattan project (where they made the atomic bomb), your birth place was listed as a post office box in Albequerque.
In Irian Jaya exists a tribe of tall, white people whose parrots are a warning sign against intruders
Professional ballerinas use about twelve pairs of toe shoes per week.
M&M's were developed so that soldiers could eat candy without getting their fingers sticky.
M&M's stands for the last names of Forrest Mars, Sr., then candymaker, and his associate Bruce Murrie.
The estimated number of M&M's sold each day in the United States is 200,000,000.
The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WW 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."
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Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 12:53 pm
The symbol on the "pound" key (#) is called anoctothorpe.
Ham radio operators got the term "ham" coined from the expression "ham-fisted operators", a term used to describe early radio users who sent Morse code (i.e. pounded their fists).
S.O.S. doesn't stand for "Save Our Ship" or "Save Our Souls" -- It was just chosen by an 1908 international conference on Morse Code because the letters S and O were easy to remember and just about anyone could key it and read it, S =dot dot dot, O = dash dash dash..
The world's largest four-faced clock sits a top the Allen-Bradley plant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Almonds are members of the peach family.
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Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 1:33 pm
It takes about a half a gallon of water to cook macaroni, and about a gallon to clean the pot.
The wheat that produces a one-pound loaf of bread requires two tons of water to grow.
The top three cork-producing countries are Spain, Portugal and Algeria. (Cork comes from trees.)
Only thirty percent of the famous Maryland blue crabs are actually from Maryland, the rest are from North Carolina and Virginia.
Jelly Belly jelly beans were the first jelly beans in outer space when they went up with astronauts in the June 21,1983 voyage of the space shuttle Challenger (the same voyage as the first American woman in space, Sally Ride).
The average ear of corn has eight-hundred kernels arranged in sixteen rows.
Kerimski Church in Finland is world's biggest church made of wood.
The St. Louis Gateway Arch had a projected death toll while it was being built. No one died.
The word "noon" came from an old church term "none" meaning three. There was a monastic order that was so devout that they declared they would not eat until that time. Since they rang the bells indicating time, "none" came earlier and earlier. The towns people called mid-day "noon" to ridicule them.
Tribeca in Manhattan stands for TRIangle BElow CAnal street. Soho stands for SOuthof HOuston street.
Columbia University is the second largest land owner in New York City, after the Catholic Church.
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Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 3:03 pm
Because their work was so physically demanding, slave sugar-cane cutters were the South's most costly field hands. At one point, their price became so high on the New Orleans slave market that the Louisiana planter tried to hire Irish and German immigrants instead. This plan backfired when the hired workers went on strike for double pay right in the middle of the sugar harvest. Source: "Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts"
Bananas do not grow on trees, but on rhizomes.
The Statue of Liberty's tablet is two feet thick.
There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.
Way back when they were using marble columns, the people selling the columns would carve out the centers and fill it with wax. So the people buying them started asking "Is it without wax?" Or in other words "Are you sincere?"
A coat hanger is 44 inches long if straightened
The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
The smallest mushroom's name is "Hop-low."
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Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 3:18 pm
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."
A-1 Steak Sauce contains both orange peel and raisins.
The straw was probably invented by Egyptian brewers to taste in-process beer without removing the fermenting ingredients which floated on the top of the container.
A Chinese checkerboard has 121 holes.
The lot numbers for the cyanide-tainted Tylenol capsules scare back in 1982 were MC2880 and 1910MD.
The ball assembly on top of a flagpole is called the truck.
Dirty Harry's badge number is 2211.
Most Americans' car horns beep in the key of F.
The first fossilized specimen of Austalopithecus afarenisis was named Lucy after the palentologists' favorite song, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, by the Beatles.
The "Calabash" pipe, most often associated with Sherlock Holmes, was not used by him until William Gillette (an American) portrayed Holmes onstage. Gillette needed a pipe he could keep in his mouth while he spoke his lines.
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