The South Pole is colder than the North Pole.

Sylvia Miles had the shortest performance ever nominated for an Oscar with Midnight Cowboy. Her entire role lasted only six minutes.

Giraffes have no vocal cords.

Los Angeles's full name is El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula.

The Ramses brand of condom is named after the great pharaoh Ramses II. He fathered more than 160 children.

Queen Elizabeth II made her last curtsey at her father's funeral.

The longest Oscar acceptance speech ever was made by Greer Garson for 1924's Mrs. Miniver. It took an hour.

Insects consume 10% of the world's food supply every year.

China has only about 200 family names.

The shortest war in history was between Zanzibar an England in 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes.

In ancient Rome, it was considered a sign of leadership to be born with a crooked nose.

The Looney Tunes theme song is actually called The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down.

The phrase “under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance on June 14, 1954.

Abe Lincoln's favorite sport was wrestling.

The YKK on zippers stands for Yoshida Kogyo Kabushibibaisha, the world's largest zipper manufacturer.

The first city in the world to have a population of more than one million was London.

Fingernails grow four times faster than toenails.

Elizabeth I of England suffered from "anthophobia," a fear of roses.

Earth is the only planet not named after a God.

The ashes of the average cremated person weigh nine pounds.

The term karaoke means "empty orchestra" in Japanese.

The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

You are likely to blink 415 million times during your lifetime.

The first star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood was dedicated to Joanne Woodward on February 9, 1960.

Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.

Seven fictional characters have stars on the Walk of Fame: Kermit the Frog, Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker and Snow White.

You're more likely to get stung by a bee on a windy day that in any other weather.

When a shrimp is first born, it's male--it gradually evolves into being female as it matures.

If an octopus is hungry enough, it will eat its own arms.

The Netherlands used to be known as the United States.

The first winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture--the only silent film to achieve that honor--was the 1927 film, Wings.

In Fantasia, the sorcerer's name is Yensid, which is Disney spelled backward.

Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.

Giraffes are unable to cough.

Fanta Orange is the third largest selling soft drink in the world.

Every photograph of an American atomic bomb detonation was taken by Harold Edgerton.

All U.S. Presidents have worn glasses, some of them just didn't like to be seen wearing them in public.

Debra Winger was the voice of E.T.

Dr. Seuss coined the word "nerd" in his 1950 book, If I Ran the Zoo.

Owls are the only birds that can see the color blue.

King Charles VII, assassinated in 1167, was the first Swedish king with the name of Charles. Charles I, II, III, IV, V, never existed.

A person at rest generates as much heat as a 100-watt lightbulb.

A whale's heart beats only nine times a minute.

In Minnesota, you may not hang male and female underwear next to each other on a clothesline.

Taft was the last President with facial hair.

The Chinese ideogram for "trouble" depicts two women living under one roof.

The famous split-fingered Vulcan salute is actually intended to represent the first letter ("shin," pronounced "sheen") of the word "shalom." As a boy, Leonard Nimoy observed his rabbi using it in a benediction and eventually added it to Star Trek lore.

The first CD pressed in the U.S. was Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA.

The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.

The L.L. in L.L. Bean stands for Leon Leonwood.

Car manufacturer Henry Ford was awarded Hitler's Supreme Order of the German Eagle.

Alexander the Great was an epileptic.

It's estimated that you'll eat 35,000 cookies in your lifetime.

Playing cards were issued to British pilots in WWII. If captured, they could be soaked in water and unfolded to reveal a map for escape

A day on Jupiter lasts about 9 hours, 50 minutes and 30 seconds at the equator.

The only creatures that have hymens are humans and horses.

On average, 13 people a year die from vending machines falling on them.

The sperm of a mouse is longer than the sperm of an elephant.

The top three cork-producing countries in the world are Spain, Portugal and Algeria.

The average adult stands 0.4 inch taller in the morning than in the evening, because the cartilage in the spine compresses during the day.

There is a town in Newfoundland, Canada called Dildo.

Chocolate contains the same chemical, phenylethylamine, that your brain produces when you fall in love.

In her films, Shirley Temple always had 56 curls in her hair.

One out of every three English males between the ages of 17 and 35 was killed in World War I.

Anyone writing a letter to the New York Times has one chance in 21 of having the letter published.

On the day The Wizard of Oz's Judy Garland died, a tornado touched down in Kansas.

The Apaches referred to horses as "god dogs."

The saguaro cactus does not grow its first arm until it's at least 75 years old.

Galileo's most powerful telescope was as strong as a pair of binoculars are today.

It was illegal for women to wear buttons in fifteenth-century Florence.

It takes 21 pounds of milk to make one pound of butter.

The English language has the most words—nearly one million. German has less than 180,000 words. French has less than 100,000.

Fish cough.

People living in mountain states eat 30 percent more cookies than other people.

During its lifetime an oyster changes its sex from male to female and back several times.

The dunce cap of schoolhouse fame originates from a paper cone placed on the heads of accused witches during the Middle Ages. When Joan of Arc was martyred, she was wearing one of them.

Honey is used as the center of some golf balls.

About 10 million people share your birthday.

"Ping-Pong" is a registered trademark of Parker Brothers.

Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.

All of the clocks in the movie Pulp Fiction are stuck on 4:20.

A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.

You are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a poisonous spider.

The windiest place on earth is Mt. Washington, in New Hampshire.

You can use pinecones to forecast the weather--the scales will close when rain is on the way.

The red bumps on a turkey's head are called "caruncles."

One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today because cotton growers in the '30s lobbied against hemp farmers--they saw it as competition.

The IRS would need at least 15 3/4 miles of shelves to store the tax forms they receive each year.

If a cow has twins, a bull and a heifer, the heifer will never be able to reproduce.

It takes a fall of about eight building stories to kill a cat. A fall of three stories will typically break their jaw (due to a floating collar bone), but it takes a fall of five or six stories to break a leg.

A building in Belgium was taxed if there was a street light on it...unless a statue of the Virgin Mary were place above it. Hence, there are no buildings in the city without a statue of the Virgin Mary.

Mailing an entire building has been illegal in the U.S. since 1916 when a man mailed a 40,000-ton brick house across Utah to avoid high freight rates.

The largest stained-glass window in the world is at Kennedy International Airport in New York City. It can be seen on the American Airlines terminal building and measures 300 feet long by 23 feet high.

Pepsi was originally named Brad's Drink, and Kool-Aid originally went by Fruit Smack Flavored Syrup.

According to Archives of General Medicine, coffee drinkers have sex more frequently and enjoy it more than non-coffee drinkers.

A seagull drinks salt water because it has special glands that filter out the salt.

Koalas never drink water. They get fluids from the eucalyptus leaves they eat.

Fresca, the soft drink, had problems when it was sold in Mexico. There, Fresca is slang for lesbian.

Sheep prefer to drink running water.

The housefly hums in the middle octave, key of F.

A whale's penis is called a dork.

Electricity doesn't move through a wire but through a field around the wire.

The blueprints for the Eiffel Tower covered more than 14,000 square feet of drafting paper.

Abraham Lincoln was the only U.S. president ever granted a patent.

General U.S. Grant owned slaves.

According to a British law passed in 1845, attempting to commit suicide was a capital offense. The punishment? The offense was punishable by hanging.

Acting was once considered to be evil, and the actors in the first English play to be performed in America were arrested.

In India it costs less to have sex with a prostitute than it does to buy a condom.

In Papua New Guinea there are villages within five miles of each other that speak different languages.

A fully loaded supertanker travelling at normal speed takes a least 20 minutes to stop.

In space, astronauts can’t cry because there is no gravity, so the tears can't flow.

John Wilkes Booth's brother once saved the life of Abraham Lincoln's son.

Male bees will try to attract sex partners with orchid fragrance.

A chameleon's tongue is twice the length of its body.

How many cars can drive side by side on the Monumental Axis in Brazil, the world's widest road? 160.

A six-pound sea hare can lay 40,000 eggs in a single minute.

A blind chameleon still changes colors to match his environment.

19th century tooth powder often contained porcelain, smashed coral or cuttlefish bone.

On the new $100 bill the time on the clock tower of Independence Hall is 4:10.

There are four cars and eleven lightposts on the back of a $10 bill.

The earliest known legal text was written by Ur Nammu in 2100 B.C.

40% of McDonald's profits come from the sales of Happy Meals.

Some 160,000 people attempt suicide every year in France.

99% of the solar systems mass is concentrated in the sun.

The oldest commercially marketed carbonated drink was Moxie, which became available in apothecaries as a medical tonic in 1876.

The first time movie audiences were treated to a flushing toilet was in Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 release Psycho.

The Union ironclad, Monitor, was the first U.S. ship to have a flush toilet.

The average American eats 114,000 Tootsie Rolls in their lifetime.

27% of U.S. male college students believe life is a meaningless existential hell.

On the average, a normal person's eye muscles move about 100,000 to 150,000 times in one day.

Most toilets flush in E flat.

The Ancient Egyptians trained baboons to wait at their tables.

England is smaller than New England.

Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots.

Elephants have been known to remain standing after they die.

Porcupines are excellent swimmers, because their quills are hollow.

Some insects can live up to a year without their heads.

Some ribbon worms will eat themselves if they cant find any food.

All 17 children of Queen Anne died before she did.

Almost a quarter of the land area of Los Angeles is taken up by automobiles.

The African lungfish can live out of water for up to four years.

In 1935, Jesse Owens set six track and field world records in less than one hour.

Band-Aid bandages first appeared on the market in 1921, however, the little red string that is used to open the package did not get added until 1940.

Gene Cernan was the last man on the moon.

Every major league baseball team in the U.S. buys about eighteen thousand baseballs each season.

Leonardo da Vinci spent twelve years painting the Mona Lisa's lips.

When glass breaks, the cracks move at speeds of up to 3,000 miles per hour.

Today’s average household in the USA contains more computer power than existed in the world before 1965.

The average desktop computer contains 5-10 times more computing power than was used to land a man on the moon.

The Academy Award statue is named after a librarian's uncle. One day Margaret Herrick, librarian for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, remarked that the statue looked like her Uncle Oscar--the name stuck.

Anise is the scent on the artificial rabbit that is used in greyhound races.

Most cows give more milk when they listen to music.

The onion is actually a lily.

Roses cut in the afternoon last longer than ones cut in the morning.

The moon is one million times drier than the Gobi Desert.

The embryos of tiger sharks fight each other while in their mother's womb, the survivor being the baby shark that is born.

Jimmy Carter was the first U.S. president to have been born in a hospital.

Because it has no backbone, a seventy-pound octopus can squeeze through a hole the size of a silver dollar.

Beethoven poured ice water over his head when he sat down to create music, believing it stimulated his brain.

Kermit the Frog has 11 points on his collar around his neck.

Tabasco sauce is made by fermenting vinegar and hot peppers in a French oak barrel which has three inches of salt on top and is aged for three years until all the salt is diffused through the barrel.

Stevie Wonder endorses all contracts with his fingerprint.

There are more Samoans in Los Angeles than on American Samoa.

The stick insects of Indonesia are the biggest insects in the world, sometimes reaching a foot in length.

Men have more blood than women. Men have 1.5 gallons versus .875 gallons for women.

One year, Elvis Presley once paid 91% of his annual income to the IRS.

Mistletoe is a parasite. It wraps itself around certain trees to extract the sap from them. On the other hand, mistletoe, an evergreen, can also help its host by supplying it with chlorophyll in winter when the host plant has lost its leaves.

Prize fights prior to the turn of the century were fought bare knuckled, and often lasted up to more than a hundred rounds.

The expression "tit for tat" comes from "dit vor dat" which means "this for that" in Dutch.

Julius Caesar was self-conscious about his receding hairline, hence the laurel wreath he wore.

Jeanne Pierre Francois Blanchard built the first parachute and tested it using a dog.

In 1845 Boston had an ordinance banning bathing unless you had a doctor's prescription.

The wingspan of a Boeing 747 jet is longer than the Wright Brothers' first flight.

The Red Baron, Manfred von Richtofen, Germany's air ace in World War I, was nicknamed by Allied pilots for his plane, a red Albatros fighter—he had 60 confirmed kills. He was shot down, and killed, in France on April 21, 1918.

Lobsters are scared of octopuses. The sight of one makes a lobster freeze.

The first typewriter was built by William Burt in 1829 and was intended to be used for the blind.

People who have never been married are seven and a half times more likely than married people to be admitted to a psychiatric facility.

We tie shoes to the cars of newlyweds because shoes are related to feet, and feet have long been considered phallic symbols. Tying shoes to the car serves the same purpose as throwing rice, it's a wish for the couple's fertility

The 12th president of the United States was David Rice Atchinson, a Missouri senator who served for one day in 1849.

The image of the king used in most standard decks of playing cards is said to have been based on Charles I, the English monarch who was beheaded in 1649.

The giant crab of Japan can be as large as 12 feet across.

The specific gravity of your skin and that of Silly Putty is close enough that doctors have actually used Silly Putty to align and test CAT scan machines.

LEGO comes from the Danish, "LEg GOdt," which means "play well."

Levi's 501 jeans got their number from their original stock number in the first Levi's store.

A shark can detect one part of blood in 100 million parts of water.

The word "piano" is really an abbreviation for the word "pianoforte."

Duffel bags are named after a town of Duffel, Belgium, where they were first made.

The words "volt" and "voltage" are named for a member of the Italian nobility in the 1700s named Count Voltman.

The word "samba" means "to rub navels together."

Children grow faster in the springtime.

One in every four Americans has appeared on television.

Playing cards in India are round.

The word Diastima is the word for having a gap between your teeth.

The infinity symbol is called a lemniscate.

The smallest number spelled with an "a" is one thousand.

Slugs have 4 noses.

Cat urine glows under a black light.

The Amazon river pushes so much water into the Atlantic that, more than 100 miles at sea, off the mouth of the river, one can dip fresh water out of the ocean and drink it.

The brain of Neanderthal man was larger than that of modern man.