Regular Rep: 7  Joined: 20 Sep 2005 Posts: 820 OFFLINE | Debra Winger was the voice of E.T.
Pearls melt in vinegar.
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.
The 3 most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.
It’s possible to lead a cow upstairs...but not downstairs.
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.
The sentence, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." uses every letter in the alphabet. (Developed by Western Union to Test telex/two communications)
Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.
A duck’s quack doesn’t echo, and no one knows why.
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.)
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 used to burn their houses down - hence the expression, “to get fired."
Hershey’s Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it’s kissing the conveyor belt.
The name Jeep came from the abbreviation used in the army for the “General Purpose” vehicle, G.P.
The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.
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-Star Game.
Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
The mask used by Michael Myers in the original “Halloween” was actually a Captain Kirk mask painted white.
If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne, it will keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom.
Snails can sleep for 3 years without eating.
Actor Tommy Lee Jones and vice-president Al Gore were freshman roommates at Harvard.
The fingerprints of Koala bears are virtually indistinguishable from those of humans, so much so that they could be confused at a crime scene.
All of the clocks in the movie “Pulp Fiction” are stuck on 4:20.
James Doohan, who plays Lt. Commander Montgomery Scott on Star Trek, is missing the entire middle finger of his right hand.
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.
There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a “Friday the 13th."
Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.
The national anthem of Greece has 158 verses. No one in Greece has memorized all 158 verses.
There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
The average secretary’s left hand does 56% of the typing.
A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
There are more chickens than people in the world.
Two-thirds of the world’s eggplant is grown in New Jersey.
The longest one-syllable word in the English language is “screeched."
All of the clocks in the movie Pulp Fiction are stuck on 4:20.
No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver or purple.
“Dreamt” is the only English word that ends in the letters “mt”.
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.
Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.
Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.
There are only five words in the English language which end in "-dous”: tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, Timidous, and hazardous.
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.
In most advertisements, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.
Al Capone’s business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
The only real person to be a Pez head was Betsy Ross.
When the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers play football at home, the stadium becomes the state’s third largest city.
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 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.
It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.
Who’s that playing the piano on the “Mad About You” theme? Paul Reiser himself.
In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.
The name for Oz in the “Wizard of Oz” was thought up when the creator,
Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N and O-Z, hence “Oz."
The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.
John Lennon’s first girlfriend was named Thelma Pickles.
The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.
Stewardesses' is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.
Typewriter is the only ten letter word you can type on the top row of your keyboard.
Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and were still smelling pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the b.o.
Baths equaled a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually loose someone in it. Hence the saying, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water."
Houses had thatched roofs. Thick straw, piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the pets ... dogs, cats and other small animals, mice, rats, bugs lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying, “It’s raining cats and dogs."
There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could really mess up your nice clean bed. So, they found if they made beds with big posts and hung a sheet over the top, it addressed that problem. Hence those beautiful big 4 poster beds with canopies.
The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt, hence the saying “dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors which would get slippery in the winter when wet. So they spread thresh on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they kept adding more thresh until when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed at the entryway, hence a “thresh hold."
They cooked in the kitchen in a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They mostly ate vegetables and didn’t get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew had food in it that had been in there for a month. Hence the rhyme: peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.
Sometimes they could obtain pork and would feel really special when that happened. When company came over, they would bring out some bacon and hang it to show it off. It was a sign of wealth and that a man could really bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and “chew the fat."
Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with a high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food. This happened most often with tomatoes, so they stopped eating tomatoes ... for 400 years.
Most people didn’t have pewter plates, but had trenchers - a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. Trencher were never washed and a lot of times worms got into the wood. After eating off wormy trenchers, they would get “trench mouth."
Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the “upper crust."
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a “wake."
England is old and small and they started running out of places to bury people. So, they would dig up coffins and would take their bones to a house and reuse the grave. In reopening these coffins, one out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they thought they would tie a string on their wrist and lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night to listen for the bell. Hence on the “graveyard shift” they would know that someone was “saved by the bell” or he was a “dead ringer."
Mosquito repellents don’t repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito’s sensors so they don’t know you’re there.
Dentists have recommended that a toothbrush be kept at least 6 feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush.
The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as substitute for blood plasma.
American car horns beep in the tone of F.
No piece of paper can be folded more than 7 times.
Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes.
1 in every 4 Americans has appeared on television.
You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television.
Oak trees do not produce acorns until they are fifty years of age or older.
The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley’s gum.
The king of hearts is the only king without a mustache.
A Boeing 747s wingspan is longer than the Wright brother’s first flight.
Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.
The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA."
Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning.
The 57 on the Heinz ketchup bottle represents the number of Varieties of pickles the company once had.
The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.
Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin.
The first owner of the Marlboro company died of lung cancer.
Barbie’s full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.
Betsy Ross is the only real person to ever have been the head on a Pez dispenser.
Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.
Adolf Hitler’s mother seriously considered having an abortion but was talked out of it by her doctor.
Marilyn Monroe had six toes.
All US Presidents have worn glasses. Some just didn’t like being seen wearing them in public.
Walt Disney was afraid of mice.
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.
The three most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.
Average life span of a major league baseball: seven pitches.
A duck’s quack doesn’t echo and no one knows why.
Richard Milhouse Nixon was the first US president whose name contains all the letters from the word “criminal." The second? William Jefferson Clinton
A rat can last longer without water than a camel.
Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself.
The dot over the letter “i” is called a tittle.
A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.
A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.
A 2 X 4 is really 1-1/2” by 3-1/2”.
On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily! (That explains a few mysteries....)
Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn’t wear pants.
Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.
The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000.
There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with orange, purple and silver.
The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan. There was never a recorded Wendy before.
The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin in World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death. (Who was the sadist who discovered this??)
Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to s-l-o-w film down so you could see his moves. That’s the opposite of the norm.
The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA."
The original name for butterfly was flutterby.
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.
The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time, the most known player on the market was Victrola, so the called themselves Motorola.
Roses may be red, but violets are indeed violet.
By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you cannot sink into quicksand.
Celery has negative calories. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.
Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.
Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.
Sherlock Holmes NEVER said, “Elementary, my dear Watson."
An old law in Bellingham, Washington, made it illegal for a woman to take more than three steps backwards while dancing!
The glue on Israeli postage is certified kosher.
The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from public libraries.
Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them.
Bats always turn left when exiting a cave! ---
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