During World War II, U.S. bakers were ordered to stop selling sliced bread for the duration of the war on January 18, 1943. Only whole loaves were made available to the public. It was never explained how this action helped the war effort.

Penny Marshall was the first woman director to have a film take in more than $100 million at the box office--the film was 1988's Big.

Dolphins swim in circles while they sleep with the eye on the outside of the circle open to keep watch for predators. After a certain amount of time they reverse and swim in the opposite direction with the opposite eye open.

A hippopotamus can open its mouth wide enough to accommodate a four-foot-tall child.

A newborn turkey chick has to be taught to eat, or it will starve.

Eskimos don't gamble.

The moon weighs 81 billion billion tons.

The bat is the only mammal that can fly.

A cockroach can live several weeks with its head cut off.

Most tropical marine fish could survive in a tank filled with human blood.

The caterpillar has more than 2,000 muscles.

A hippopotamus can run faster than a man.

It would take 27,000 spiders, each spinning a single web, to produce a pound of web.

The words CHOICE COD read the same when held in front of a mirror upside-down.

Granite conducts sound ten times faster than air.

Man is the only animal that cries.

The average person's total skin covering would weigh about six pounds if collected into one mass.

There is no known way for a submarine to communicate with land via radio when underwater.

There are more television sets in the United States than there are people in Japan.

The U.S. Constitution has 4,400 words. It is the oldest and the shortest written constitution of any government in the world.

Of the typographical errors in the Constitution, the misspelling of the word "Pensylvania" above the signers' names is probably the most glaring.

Thomas Jefferson did not sign the Constitution. He was in France during the convention, where he served as the U.S. minister.

Patrick Henry was elected as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, but declined, because he "smelt a rat."

Because of his poor health, Benjamin Franklin needed help to sign the Constitution. As he did so, tears streamed down his face.

The oldest person to sign the Constitution was Benjamin Franklin (81). The youngest was Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey (26).

Charles Dickens was an insomniac. He believed he had the best chance of getting some sleep if he positioned himself exactly in the middle of the bed which must at all times be pointed in a northerly direction.

The actor Stewart Granger, changed his name because didn't like his real name. James Stewart.

William Butler Yeats wrote his most important poems between the age of 50 and 75.

If the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.

A scorpion could survive for three weeks if it was embedded in a block of ice.

After his sight improved, Thomas Edison still preferred using Braille to more normal reading.

Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, also set a world water-speed record of over 70 miles an hour at the age of 72.

The last London smog occurred in 1962.

A fog belt 50 ft. deep over an area of 104 square miles contains no more moisture that single bucket of water.

As early as 246 B.C., con men were at work "aging" manuscripts and selling them to book collectors as antiques.

Copies of the Bible and the Koran small enough to fit in a walnut shell have been written by hand.

Sidewinder snakes move in their peculiar fashion to avoid putting too much of their body area on the hot desert sand.

Two mouths full of cowbane, a member of the carrot family, is enough to kill you.

The world's chickens lay around 400,000,000,000 eggs each year.

In the eighteenth century, many women went to the trouble of having their gums pierced so they could use hooks to secure their false teeth.

In 1973, two blind Peruvian soccer teams played a match using a ball filled with dried peas.

During World War II, Americans had the idea of fitting bats with miniature bombs that would then be dropped as they flew over the enemy.

The scorpion fish can merge the shape of its head with the surrounding rocks.

The early Greeks experimented with the direction of their writing, going from right to left and left to right alternately, before adopting what is now the standard Western practice.

Leonardo da Vinci invented an alarm clock that woke the sleeper by gently rubbing their feet.

The plant life contained in the oceans of the world makes up 85 percent of all our greenery.

William the Conqueror was so strong he could jump onto his horse wearing full armor.

The Indian atlas-moth has a 12-inch wing span.

There is more pigment in brown eyes than in blue eyes.

Allan Pinkerton, founder of the famous detective agency, died in 1884 when he stumbled, bit his own tongue, and was killed by the resulting gangrene.

Sri Lanka is the second largest tea-producer in the world.

Marie Curie, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who discovered radium, died as a result of over-exposure to radioactivity.

Crocodiles can see underwater because they have a semi-transparent third eyelid that slides into place when necessary.

In 1972, a Swedish man balanced on one foot for over five hours, using nothing for support.

People used to wear shoes on either foot.

The great European cathedrals were so solidly built that there is sometimes as much stone below ground as there is above it.



A giraffe's blood pressure is at least twice that of a healthy man.

Tens of thousands of Ugandans reported that they had seen and heard a talking tortoise in 1978.

King Camp Gillette invented the first disposable safety razor. Two years after he first patented his invention, he had only sold 168 blades. By the following year, sales jumped to an incredible 12.4 million blades.

A thick glass is more likely to crack if hot water is poured onto it than a thin one.

Henry Thoreau's nose was so long be could swallow it.

The popular card game bridge was invented in Turkey.

It was the accepted practice in babylon 4,000 years ago that for amonth after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer, and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the "honey month" or what we know today as the "honeymoon."

Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim or handle of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. "Wet your whistle," is the phrase inspired by this practice.

In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes—when you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. That's where the phrase, "good night, sleep tight!" came from.

The term "the whole nine yards" came from WW II fighter pilots in the Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the gourd, 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 nine yards."

Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.

Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.

Ten percent of the Russian government's income comes from the sale of vodka.

In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all the world's nuclear weapons combined.

The San Francisco cable cars are the only mobile national monuments.

The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds.

Buzz Aldrin was the second man to set foot on the Moon. Moon was also his mother's maiden name.


HAIR TRIVIA

It was not Delilah that cut off Samson's hair. First his head was shaved, not clipped. Delilah made Samson "sleep upon her knees; and she called for a man, and she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head..." No coincidence that there were seven locks either. The same as the Seven Deadly Sins.

Mary Magdalene is the patroness of hairdressers.

Sideburns were named after General Ambrose Everett Burnside—inventor of the breech-loading rifle.

Louis the XIV had fourteen personal wigmakers and 1,000 wigs.

Josephine Clofullia was the most famous bearded lady of all time and a prominent attraction in PT Barnum's sideshow in the 19th century. She modeled her beard after Napoleon III. (She may have suffered from a medical condition called naevus pilosus, where enormous moles or birthmarks form with great amounts of hair growing out of them.)

The Greeks in the time of Alexander liked blonde hair. Men and women alike bleached their hair with potash water and herbs, creating a reddish-blond color.

To preserve their elaborate coiffures, geishas in ancient Japan slept with their heads in bags filled with buckwheat chaff.

During the Renaissance, fashionable aristocratic Italian women shaved their hair several inches back from their natural hairlines.

In 18th century England, women's wigs were sometimes four feet high. They were dusted with flour and decorated with stuffed birds, replicas of gardens, plates of fruit or even model ships. Sometimes they were so elaborate, they were worn continuously for several months. They were matted with lard to keep them from coming apart, which made mice and insects a hazard. The fad died suddenly when a hair-powder tax made their upkeep too expensive.

Barbers at one time combined shaving and haircutting with bloodletting and pulling teeth. The white stripes on a field of red on a barber pole represent the bandages used in the bloodletting.

Alexander the Great made his soldiers keep clean-shaven so the enemy couldn't grab them by the beards and stab them with their swords.

The Romans let their beards grow during mourning, but the Greeks did the opposite.

Each square inch of human skin consists of sixty hairs. Not to mention 90 oil glands. And 19,000 sensory cells.

Hair is made up of dead tissue.

There are about 100,000 hairs on the human head.

Hair grows about 0.01 inch every day.

The average person loses about 25-125 hairs a day.

Apart from its vulnerability to fire, human hair is almost impossible to destroy. It decays at a very slow rate, so slow that is almost non-disintegrative. It can't be destroyed by cold, change of climate, water, etc., and it is resistant to many kinds of acids and corrosive materials.

The hair of an adult can stretch 25 percent of its length without breaking. If it is less elastic, it is not healthy.

"Lanugo" is the soft woolly hair that covers the human fetus, and that of other mammals, during development. It is shed and virtually disappears at birth.

The Todas, a sect in India, hold in high regard their "holy milkman." He must be celibate, and he can never cut his hair. Ordinary customers can only approach him on Mondays and Thursdays.

Nose hair serves the same purpose as the air filter in your car.

The migratory locust is kept flying by a bundle of hairs on its head. When these hairs are stimulated by an air current coming from the front, they create a nerve stimulus that keeps the locust's wings beating. The beating, in turn, accelerates the air current. Once the locust takes off, it flies for long distances.

It is widely held that hair on a corpse continues to grow. This belief may be due to the fact that some tissue shrinkage occurs when one dies. The hair only appears to have grown, because the skin around each hair has receded somewhat.

"Whence" means "from where," so "from whence" is redundant.

The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary is banned in Carlsbad, New Mexico.

A pencil will write in zero gravity, upside down and under water.

The typical pencil can draw a line 35 miles long.

The keyboard we use, developed in 1867, began with keys in alphabetical order. It was modified to prevent the jamming of keys, and evolved into the configuration we use today. Better ways of placing the alphabet have been developed, but no one can sell them.

In 1956, the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay went to "The Red Balloon" which contained no dialogue.

John Hughes wrote the screenplay for Weird Science in just two days.

Julius Epstein won an Oscar for co-writing Casablanca in 1942, and 31 years later won another Oscar for Reuben, Reuben.

The average U.S. high school graduate has a vocabulary of about 60,000 words.

The letters 'J', 'U', and 'W' were not used by the Romans.

"Typewriter" is the longest word that can be made using the letters on only one row of the keyboard.

The average human body contains enough carbon to make 900 pencils.

The first book of crosswords was introduced on April 10, 1924 for a steep $1.35 per book and each one came with a freshly sharpened pencil.

Goethe could only write if he had an apple rotting in the drawer of his desk.

In ancient Boustrophedon writing every alternate line in the text reads from right to left.

Rudyard Kipling only used black ink.

More than 400 films have been made based on the plays of Shakespeare.

The subject of the first printed book in England was chess.

Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.

Bambi was originally published in 1929 in German.

The first crime mentioned in the first episode of Hill Street Blues was armed robbery.

George Bernard Shaw refused an Oscar in 1938, for the screenplay Pygmalion.

The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from British public libraries.

Turkey has a ban on kissing in films.

Allied bombers were issued with Biro pens as fountain pens leaked at high altitude.

The first xerographic copy (prelude to photocopy) was "10.22.38 Astoria."

The names of the two stone lions in front of the New York Public Library are Patience and Fortitude.

The letter J does not appear anywhere on the periodic table of the elements.

"Rhythms" and "syzygy" are the longest English words without vowels.

The metal part at the end of a pencil is 20 percent sulfur.

"Bookkeeper" and "bookkeeping" are the only words in the English language with three consecutive double letters.

The oldest word in the English language is "town."

When two words are combined to form a single word (breakfast + lunch = brunch) the new word is called a "portmanteau."

The letter "w" is the only letter in the alphabet that doesn't have one syllable, it has three.

For a short time in 1967, the American Typers Association made a new punctuation mark that was a combination of the question mark and an exclamation point called an "interrobang." It was rarely used and hasn't been seen since.

It is possible to extract aspirin from the bark of trees.

African witch doctors only send their patients a bill if they expect them to live.

Hockey pucks travel at speed of up to 100 miles an hour.

T.E. Lawrence, know as Lawence of Arabia, used a fleet of Rolls Royces to transport his unit when he led British forces against the Turks in Syria.

Dante, Christopher Marlow, Daniel Defoe, Andrew Marvell and Lord Byron all acted as government spies.

The sooty tern is on the wing for as long as three years before it returns to its nesting ground.

Queen bees can lay three thousand eggs in one day.

Louis XIV insisted that none of his courtiers sit in chairs with arms.

China claims to possess the world’s smallest town—Yumen. This town, in Tibet, has only three residents—an elderly man and his two daughters. The town has a local council, chief executive and an official seal.

Bela Lugosi was buried, as he requested, in his famous Dracula cape.

There are six million trees in the Forrest of Martyrs near Jerusalem, symbolizing the Jewish death toll in World War II.

Rubber is an important ingredient in the manufacture of bubble gum.

In Wales, sheep outnumber people two to one.

The Incas and the Aztecs were able to function without the wheel.

Sir William Backstone wrote perhaps the most influential book ever on English law, yet never practiced law himself.

The Arctic tern flies to the Antarctic and back every year.

The door to 10 Downing Street, home of Britian’s Prime Minister, only opens from the inside.

Seventy-five percent of the inhabitants of Norway live within 10 miles of the sea.

If a woman commits adultery in the Tupuri tribe of Africa, she is forced to wear a brass ring round her neck for the rest of her life.

Half the world exists on a basic diet of rice.

Most mammals are color blind.

The word "girl" appears only once in the Bible.

The American poet Emily Dickinson used to talk to visitors from a adjoining room, because she was so self-conscious about her appearance.

Some Kenyans live inside the trunks of the baobab tree.

When people first started sending letters in Britain, it was the recipient who paid the postage.

Turtles don't have any teeth.

Sir Winston Churchill was a prisoner-of-war during the Boer War.

Camel meat is a great delicacy in Egypt.

More than 20 million Africans were transported to America and the Caribbean during the 300 years of the slave trade.

Ostrich racing is a popular sport in South Africa.

Mammerfest in Norway is the most northerly town in the world.

Half of all the different types of flowers in the world can be found in South America.

King Louis XI of France once commanded one of his abbots to invent a new and ridiculous musical instrument for the amusement of the Court. The abbot gathered together a series of pigs, each with their own distinctive squeal, and proceeded to prick each one of them in turn to provide the desired tune.

Henry I decided that a yard should be the distance from his thumb to the end of his nose.

The color purple was a sign of great rank in Ancient Rome.

A butterfly has 12,000 eyes.

The game of tennis originated in the French monasteries of the 11th century.

Ice cream was invented in 1620.

To the Japanese, Santa Claus is a woman.

Louis XIV of France once had an unfortunate experience while putting on a sock—his toe fell off.

The human stomach can only hold about five pints.

The Icelandic Parliament is the oldest surviving parliament in the world. It was founded in A.D. 930.

Canada's coastline is six times longer than that of Australia.

A normal spider has about 600 silk glands on its body that it uses to spin its web.

During the Middle Ages, nearly a third of every year was given over to religious holidays.

One of the most efficient ways of cleaning your teeth is to chew on a stick.

Horses can sleep standing up.

George Gershwin suffered from chronic constipation for most of his life.

Though Switzerland is a neutral country, it has compulsory military service.

Even well educated people use only about one percent of the possible words in the English language when they talk to each other.

Gale warnings were first issued in 1861.

The Stanley Cup was donated in 1893 by Canada's then-Governor General, Frederick Arthur, Lord Stanley of Preston. Lord Stanley never saw a Stanley Cup game.

During the 1918-1919 season, the Stanley Cup playoffs were halted by the worldwide influenza epidemic.

A hockey puck is three inches in diameter, one inch thick and weighs 5.5 to 6 ounces.

The first competition in the world's first Olympic games, 776 B.C., was a foot race. The participants were all males, and ran in the nude.

The term "rookie" comes from the military use of the word. It originated during the Civil War, when there was a huge influx of new soldiers, i.e., recruits or "reckies."

Hockey doesn't even make it onto the list of the top five most dangerous sports—they are football, skiing, baseball, swimming and basketball.

There is a sport called "purring" which enjoys popularity in Wales. Two opponents stand face-to-face, grasping each other firmly by the shoulders. At the starting signal, they begin kicking each other in the shins with shoes reinforced with metal toeplates. The first man to release his grip on his opponent's shoulders is the loser.

Grenade-throwing is an official sporting event in the People's Republic of China.

In Brazil, at the Maracaña Stadium, a moat had to be built around the playing field to keep fans from assaulting the players and referees.

A sport practiced in ancient China consisted of placing two angry male quails in a large glass bowl and watching as the creatures clawed each other to death.

The Aztec and Maya Indians played a complicated game not unlike lacrosse. When the game was finished, the captain of the losing team was slaughtered before the onlookers and his body was torn limb from limb

Many hamsters blink one eye at a time.

Whitby, Ontario has more donut stores per capita than any other place in the world.

Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a novel with over 50,000 words, none of which containing the letter "e."

Bulls are color blind.

A can of Spam is opened every four seconds.

"Babe" was played by over 48 pigs.

Mosquitoes have 47 teeth.

The Poison Arrow frog has enough poison to kill 2,200 people.

The largest cabbage on record weighed 144 pounds.

Kidney stones come in any color—from yellow to brown.

The McDonalds at the SkyDome in Toronto, Ontario is the only one in the world that sells hot dogs.

The first episode of "Leave it to Beaver" aired on October 4, 1957.

The first flushing toilet seen on TV was on Leave it to Beaver. (However, only the tank was shown, not the bowl.)

Jerry Seinfeld's apartment number (on the show) is 5A. In the old episodes it was 3A.

The shortest commercial ever was only four frames of a second.

Pi has been calculated to 2,260,321,363 digits.  The billionth digit in Pi is 9.

Babies are born without kneecaps. They appear when the child is 2-6 years of age.

An iguana can stay under water for 28 minutes.

A group of unicorns is called a blessing.

A group of kangaroos is called a mob.

A group of owls is called a parliament.

A group of ravens is called a murder.

Twelve or more cows is called a "flink."

The average garden-variety caterpillar has 248 muscles in its head.

A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

Alfred Hitchcock had no belly button for it was eliminated during surgery.

The average human produces 10,000 gallons of saliva in a lifetime.

A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.

Cranberry Jell-0 is the only kind that contains real fruit.

The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.

Every time you lick a stamp you consume 1/10 of a calorie.

The pound sign (#) is called an octothorpe.

Maine is the toothpick capital of the world.

Emus can't walk backwards.

New Jersey has a spoon museum with over 5,400 spoons from almost all the states.

There was once a town in West Virginia called "6."

Singapore only has one train station.

Napoleon made his battle plans in a sandbox.

The green stuff on the occasional freak potato chip is chlorophyll.

If you ate too many carrots you would turn orange.

The force of one billion people jumping at the same time is equal to 500 tons of TNT.

Howdy Doody had 48 freckles.

Hilary Clinton once said, "We are the President."

The percent of women who wash their hands after leaving a restroom is 80%.

The percent of men who wash their hands after using a restroom is 55%.

There are 333 toilet paper squares on a toilet paper roll.

"Jaws" is the most common name for a goldfish.

On an average work day, a typist's fingers travel 12.6 miles.

The average American eats two donuts a day.

The longest word in the Old Testament is "Malhershalahashbaz."

The longest time a person has been in a coma is 37 years.

Every minute in the U.S. six people turn 17.

It takes the Where's Waldo artist one month to complete a drawing.

2,500 lefties die each year using products designed for righties.

A baby is born every seven seconds.

Ten tons of space dust falls on the Earth every day.

Blue and white are the most common school colors.

Swimming pools in Phoenix, Arizona, pick up 20 pounds of dust a year.

The first message tapped by Samuel Morse over his invention the telegraph was: "What hath God wrought?"

The first words spoken by over Alexander Bell over the telephone were: "Watson, please come here. I want you."

The first words spoken by Thomas Edison over the phonograph were: "Mary had a little lamb."

The three words in the English language with the letters "uu" are: vacuum, residuum and continuum.

A baby in Florida was named: Truewilllaughinglifebuckyboome rmanifestdestiny. His middle name is George James.

In a normal lifetime an American will eat 200 pounds of peanuts and 10,000 pounds of meat.

A new book is published every 13 minutes in America.

America's best selling ice cream flavor is vanilla.

Americans eat 18 billion hot dogs a year.

Americans eat 134 pounds of sugar a year.

Every year the sun loses 360 million tons.

You can tell if a skunk is about if you smell only .000000000000071 ounce of its spray.

Animal breeders in Russia once claimed to have bred sheep with blue wool.

A dog in East Africa says "woo-woo."

A dog in Bangkok says "bahk-bahk."

A dog in Japan says "wan-wan."

A dog in Russia says "gahf-gahft."

A cow in Thailand says "oo-ah."

A cat in Japan says "neow."

A cat in Thailand says "mao."

A pig Japan says "moo-moo."

A pig in Thailand says "oot-oot."

A pig in Russia says "ha-roo."

A rooster in Germany says "ay-ee-ache-ache."

Penguins are the only bird that can leap into the air like porpoises.

India has 50 million monkeys.

By some unknown means, an iguana can end its own life.

Americans spend around $3 billion for cat and dog food a year.

Pigs can cover a mile in 7.5 minutes when running at top speed.

You breathe about 10 million times a year.

The colder the room you sleep in, the better the chances are that you'll have a bad dream.

The first non-human to win an Oscar was Mickey Mouse.

Lee Harvey Oswald was booked with mugshot number 54018.

The Gulf Stream could carry a message in a bottle at an average of four miles per hour.

The bulls-eye on a dartboard must be 5 feet 8 inches off the ground.

The foot is the most common body part bitten by insects.

The most common time for a wake up call is 7 a.m.

The doorbell was invented in 1831.

The electric shaver was patented on November 6, 1928.

Japan is the largest exporter of frog's legs.

There are seven points on the Statue of Liberty's crown.

The shell constitutes 12 percent of an egg's weight.

A squid has 10 tentacles.

A snail's reproductive organs are in its head.

A cow's only sweat glands are in its nose.

The world "and" appears 46,277 times in the Bible.

The first word played in the Scrabble rules demonstration game is "horn."

The telephone's U.S. patent number is 174 465.

There are 17 steps leading up to Sherlock Holmes' apartment.

When a horned toad is angry, it squirts blood from its eyes.

Napoleon was terrified of cats.

The typical American eats 263 eggs a year.

The fastest growing nail is on the middle finger.

The human body weighs 40 times more than the brain.

A person swallows approximately 295 times while eating dinner.

The oldest known vegetable is the pea.

The avocado has the most calories of any fruit.

The first zoo in the USA was in Philadelphia.

The letter "n" ends all Japanese words not ending in a vowel.

France has the highest per capita consumption of cheese.

The hardest bone in the human body is the jawbone.

4,000 people are injured by teapots each year.

The typical American consumes 27 pounds of cheese each year.

The shortest English word that contains the letters A, B, C, D, E, and F is "feedback."

The state of California raises the most turkeys out of all of the states.

George Washington Carver invented peanut butter.

A scallop has 35 blue eyes.

The left leg of a chicken in more tender than the right one.

The only dog that doesn't have a pink tongue is the chow.

The giraffe has the highest blood pressure of any animal.

The dumbest domesticated animal is the turkey.

Russia has the most movie theaters in the world.

The strongest muscle in the human body is the tongue.

The most fatal car accidents occur on Saturday.

Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the mercury thermometer.

The mongoose was barred live entry into the U.S. in 1902.

Goldfish swallowing started at Harvard in 1939.

Dry fish food can make goldfish constipated.

Your urine will turn bright yellow if you eat too much asparagus.

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.

Nondairy creamer is flammable.

Dr. Seuss and Kurt Vonnegut went to college together.

If you can see a rainbow you must have your back to the sun.

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.

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 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." That's where the book's title came 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 Band-Aid 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 "Night Court" was the 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.

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 dome on Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home, conceals a billiards room. In Jefferson's day, billiards were illegal in Virginia.

Whales die if their echo system fails.

Florida's beaches lose 20 million cubic yards of sand annually.

Weevils are more resistant to poisons in the morning than at night.

Cacao, the main ingredient of chocolate, is the most pest-ridden tree in the jungle.

In deep space most lubricants will disappear.

There are 35 million digestive glands in the stomach.

In 1800, only 50 cities on Earth had a population of more than 100,000.

It is possible for any American citizen to give whatever name he or she chooses to any unnamed mountain or hill in the United States.

King Henry III of France, Louis XVI of France and Napoleon all suffered from ailurophobia—fear of cats.

The principality of Monaco consists of 370 acres.

A rat can go without water longer than a camel.

During the time of Peter the Great, any Russian man who had a beard was required to pay a special tax.

Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the U.S. treasury.

The smartest dogs are the Jack Russell terrier and Scottish border collie. Dumbest: Afgan hound.

The Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters.

The amount American Airlines saved in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first class: $40,000.

City with the most Rolls Royces 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%.

Average number of days a West German goes without washing his underwear: 7.

The only President to win a Pulitzer Prize was John Kennedy for "Profiles in Courage."

The world's youngest parents were eight and nine and lived in China in 1910.

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.

The airplane Buddy Holly died in was a Beech Bonanza.

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.

Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them would burn their houses down—hence the expression "to get fired."

Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th. The last signature wasn't added until five years later.

The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are useable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.

In every episode of "Seinfeld" there is a Superman somewhere.

The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.

No NFL team that plays its home games in a domed stadium ever won a Superbowl—until the St. Louis Rams in 2000.

The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan."

In the Congo, one must be very careful not to utter the name of anyone who is out fishing. Certain Congolese think you put such a whammy on the named native that he won't catch anything but flies.

There is only one animal that can completely turn its stomach inside out. The starfish.

According to scientists, gold exists on Mars, Mercury and Venus.

Each day 100 or more whales are killed by fishermen.

In the 10th century, the Grand Vizier of Persia took his entire library with him wherever he went. The 117,000-volume library was carried by camels trained to walk in alphabetical order.

More than 14 million Bic pens are sold daily in 150 countries. "Bic" is actually a shortened version of founder Marcel Bich's name.

P. J. Tierney, father of the modern diner, died of indigestion in 1917 after eating at a diner.

A "duffer" is Australian slang for a cattle thief.

"Brasco" is Australian slang for "lavatory."

The word "gazelle" comes from the Arabian term for "affectionate," and is believed to be inspired by the creature's large, gentle eyes.

"Kemo Sabe" means "soggy shrub" in Navajo.

"Singapore" means "City of Lions," but none have ever been seen there.

"Stewardesses" is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.

100,000 cubic feet of water pours over the Niagra Falls every second.

A "clue" originally meant a ball of thread. Hence, one "unravels" the clues of a mystery.

A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time. It is 1/100 of a second.

A fireplace is called a "mantelpiece" because at one time people hung their coats (or "mantles") over the fireplace to dry them.

The name of the Internet's most popular directory, is an acronym. According to the company, the name "Yahoo" stands for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle."

If you add together all the numbers on a roulette wheel (1 to 36) the total is the mystical number 666.

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.

In Albania, nodding the head means "no" and shaking the head means "yes."

The original name for the butterfly was "flutterby."

The phrase "a red letter day" dates back to 1704, when holy days were marked in red letters in church calendars.

The pretzel is named from the Latin word "brachiatus" meaning "having branch-like arms."

In the Middle English the word "minister" meant "lowly person." It was originally adopted as a term of humility for men of the church.

Levan, Utah is "navel" spelled backwards. It is so named because it is in the middle of Utah.

The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "shah mat," which means "the king is dead."

The word "dreamt" is the only word in the English language that ends in "mt."

The word "Nazi" is actually an abbreviation. The party's full name was the Nazionalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartel.

Pinocchio is Italian for "pine eyes."

The word "queue" is the only word in the English language that is still pronounced the same way when the last four letters are removed.

The word "toast," meaning a proposal of health, originated in Rome, where an actual bit of spiced, burned bread was dropped into wine to improve the drink's flavor, absorb its sediment, and thus make it more healthful.

The word "bookkeeper" is the only word in the English language with three back-to-back double letter combinations.

There is a town in Sweden called "A" and a town in France called "Y."

What is called a "French kiss" in England and America is known as an "English kiss" in France.

The dot on top of the letter "i" is called a "tittle." "Tittle" is Latin for something very small.

The shortest verse in the Bible consists of two words: "Jesus wept." (John 11:35)

The letter "o" is the oldest letter. It has not changed in shape since its adoption in the Phoenician alphabet, circa 1,300 B.C.

The letter "b" took its present form from a symbol used in Egyptian hieroglyphics to represent a house.

When used by an ornithologist, the word "lore" refers to the space between a bird's eye and its bill.

The longest English word consisting entirely of consonants (and not including"y" as a vowel) is the word "crwth" which is from the fourteenth century and means crowd.

The most common name in the world is Muhammed.

The most common street name in the U.S. is Second Street.

Henry Ford experimented with soy. Many of the meals served in his home consisted of his soy creations.

The French national anthem, "La Marseillaise," derived its title from the enthusiasm of the men of Marseilles, France, who sang it when they marched into Paris at the outset of the French Revolution. Rouget de l'Isle, its composer, was an artillery officer. According to his account, he fell asleep at a harpsichord and dreamt the words and the music. Upon waking, he remembered the entire piece from his dream and immediately wrote it down.

A law passed in Nebraska in 1912 really set down some hard rules of the road. Drivers in the country at night were required to stop every 150 yards, send up a skyrocket, then wait eight minutes for the road to clear before proceeding cautiously, all the while blowing their horn and shooting off flares.

Crocodiles and alligators are surprisingly fast on land. Although they are rapid, they are not agile; so if you ever find yourself chased by one, run in a zigzag line. You'll lose him or her every time.

In 1500 B.C. in Egypt a shaved head was considered the ultimate in feminine beauty. Egyptian women removed every hair from their heads with special gold tweezers and polished their scalps to a high sheen with buffing cloths.

In ancient China and certain parts of India, mouse meat was considered a great delicacy.

In ancient Greece, where the mouse was sacred to Apollo, mice were sometimes devoured by temple priests.

In 1400 B.C. it was the fashion among rich Egyptian women to place a large cone of scented grease on top of their heads and keep it there all day. As the day wore on, the grease melted and dripped down over their bodies, covering their skin with an oily, glistening sheen and bathing their clothes in fragrance.

In the United States, a pound of potato chips cost two hundred times more than a pound of potatoes.

Half the foods eaten throughout the world today were developed by farmers in the Andes Mountains. Potatoes, maize, sweet potatoes, squash, all varieties of beans, peanuts, manioc, papayas, strawberries, mulberries and many other foods were first grown in this region.

Blue whales weigh as much as 30 elephants and are as long as three Greyhound buses.

According to tests made at the Institute for the Study of Animal Problems in Washington, D.C., dogs and cats, like people, are either right-handed or left-handed--that is, they favor either their right or left paws.

A person cannot taste food unless it is mixed with saliva.

According to acupuncturists, there is a point on the head that you can press to control your appetite. It is located in the hollow just in front of the flap of the ear.

Tibetans, Mongolians, and people in parts of western China put salt in their tea instead of sugar.

In 1976, a Los Angeles secretary named Jannene Swift officially married a 50-pound rock. The ceremony was witnessed by more than 20 people.

In the early 19th century the words "trousers" and "pants" were considered obscene in England.

There is approximately one chicken for every human being in the world.

The first automobile race ever seen in the United States was held in Chicago in 1895. The track ran from Chicago to Evanston, Illinois. The winner was J. Frank Duryea, whose average speed was 7 miles per hour.

In the memoirs of Catherine II of Russia, it is recorded that any Russian aristocrat who displeased the queen was forced to squat in the great antechamber of the palace and to remain in that position for several days, mewing like a cat, clucking like a hen, and pecking his food from the floor.

The outdoor temperature can be estimated to within several degrees by timing the chirps of a cricket. It is done this way: count the number of chirps in a 15-second period, and add 37 to the total. The result will be very close to the actual Fahrenheit temperature. This formula only works in warm weather.

During a severe windstorm or rainstorm the Empire State Building may sway several feet to either side.

In Elizabethan England the spoon was such a novelty, such a prized rarity, that people carried their own folding spoons to banquets.

In "Gulliver's Travels," Jonathan Swift described the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, giving their exact size and speeds of rotation. He did this more than 100 years before either moon was discovered.

It costs more to buy a new car today in the United States than it cost Christopher Columbus to equip and undertake three voyages to and from the New World.

One-fourth of the world's population lives on less than $200 a year. Ninety million people survive on less than $75 a year.

Butterflies taste with their hind feet.

Celery has negative calories. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.

In eighteenth-century English gambling dens, there was an employee whose only job was to swallow the dice if there was a police raid.

The human tongue tastes bitter things with the taste buds toward the back. Salty and pungent flavors are tasted in the middle of the tongue, sweet flavors at the tip.

A sneeze can travel as fast as 100 miles per hour.

It is impossible to sneeze and keep one's eyes open at the same time.

In 1778, fashionable women of Paris never went out in blustery weather without a lightning rod attached to their hats.

In the Balanta tribe of Africa, a bride remained married until her wedding gown was worn out. If she wanted a divorce after 2 weeks, all she had to do was rip up her dress. This was the custom until about 20 years ago, anyway.

Marie de Medici, a member of that famous Italian family and a 17th-century queen of France, had expensive tastes in clothes. One special dress was outfitted with 39,000 tiny pearls and 3,000 diamonds, and cost the equivalent of $20 million at the time it was made in 1606. She wore it once.

Here is the literal translation of one of the standard traffic signs in China. It reads: "Give large space to the festive dog that makes sport in the roadway."

In 1968, a convention of beggars in Dacca, India, passed a resolution demanding that "the minimum amount of alms be fixed at 15 paisa (three cents)." The convention also demanded that the interval between when a person hears a knock at his front door and when he offers alms should not exceed 45 seconds.

RELIGIOUS TRIVIA

A room with bath is perpetually reserved in one of Java's best hotels for the goddess of the South Sea, Njai Loro Kidul.

Although Buddhism began and first flourished in India, it had by 1200 all but disappeared there, but had won huge numbers of followers in Ceylon, Burma, Thailand, China and Japan.

In early eighteenth-century Portugal, the Church owned two-thirds of all the land.

According to Genesis 3:6, it was not Adam, but Eve who first ate the forbidden fruit.

The Jews and the early Christians started the day at sunset. "Christmas Eve" means, accordingly, the first part of Christmas Day, and it was only later that it came to be considered as the evening before Christmas. The same goes for New Year's Eve.

During the high Middle Ages, there was, on the average, a church for every 200 people.

Before the Chinese takeover of Tibet in 1952, 25 percent of the males in the country were Buddhist monks.

The Puritans forbade the singing of Christmas carols.

In the eleventh century Benedict IX was Pope at eleven years old.

The ceremony to marry an Amish couple traditionally takes about 3 hours 30 minutes.

Bookstore owners in Raleigh, North Carolina, contend that the volume most often stolen year after year is the Bible.

The word "Hallelujah" is common to all languages. It is never translated.

At one time, Martin Luther was the recognized authority on evicting the Devil. Satan pestered Luther with frequent visits and even showered him with hickory nuts on one occasion. The militant leader of the Reformation had other means of dealing with the Devil. In one encounter, Luther threw dung in the Devil's face. In another, he broke wind at him.

Among the Jews of ancient Palestine, there was a specific dietary proscription against mousemeat.

The story of Noah's Ark was written earlier than the biblical version--in the Sumerian "Epic of Gilgamesh." The "Noah" of this epic is Utnapishtim, who is supernaturally warned to build a boat in which to survive the deluge. Similarity extends even to the sending out of birds to see if dry land has appeared.

Nowhere in the Bible does it mention that Jesus was ever a carpenter as most people think. Although Matthew 13:55 states that he was a carpenter's son, and Mark 6:3 tells that people called him a carpenter, there is no other reference in the Bible indicating the occupation of Jesus.

The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem is one of the few shrines in the world simultaneously sacred to three religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

Forty-seven Bibles are sold or distributed throughout the world every minute of the day.

Of the 156 women college presidents in the United States in 1979, 105 were nuns.

One has to wonder why the day when Jesus died is called "Good Friday." In its earlier, archaic meaning, the word "good" was synonymous with "holy" and was often used as a euphemism for God.

The Papacy has a startling sexual history. Pope Sergius III arranged, with the help of his mother, that his bastard should become Pope after him. John VII, deposed in A.D. 963, turned St. John Lateran into a brothel: he was accused of adultery and incest. Leo VIII, who replaced him, died stricken in paralysis in the act of adultery. Benedict IX, elected Pope at the age of ten, grew up "in unrestrained license, and shocked the sensibilities even of a dull and barbarous age." Balthasar Cossa, elected Pope to end the Great Schism, later admitted to incest, adultery, and other crimes ("two hundred maids, matrons and widows, including a few nuns, fell victims to his brutal lust)." In one famous occurrence at the court of Pope Alexander VI, prostitutes were called to dance naked before the assembly, after which prizes were offered to those men who, in the opinion of the spectators, managed to copulate with the most number of prostitutes.

The animal that can last the longest without drinking water is the rat.

A stingray never actually sees the food as it eats, since its eyes are on top of its head and its mouth and nostrils are on the bottom.

On an island in northern Wales there's a village called Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwy rndrobwllllandysiliogogogoch.

The fastest of all fish in the sea is the swordfish. They reach speeds of close to 70 miles per hour.

The raccoon derives its name from the Indian word meaning "he who scratches with his hands."

The word "puppy" comes from the French poupee, meaning "doll."

Until the 1950s, Tibetans disposed of their dead by taking the body up a hill, hacking it into little pieces, and feeding the remains to the birds.

Alfred Butts, the inventor of Scrabble, decided on the frequency and distribution of letters by analyzing the front page of the New York Times. He used a penknife to cut his first set of wooden Scrabble tiles.

Horse-racing regulations state that no race horse's name may contain more than 18 letters. (Actually, it's 18 letters or spaces, total.) Names that are too long would be cumbersome on racing sheets.

The Popsicle was invented by eleven-year-old Frank Epperson in 1905. He left a container of soda and a stirrer outside overnight and in the morning discovered them frozen together.

The first plastic ever invented was celluloid, it came about as an alternative for billiard balls made from Ivory.

Snails have teeth. They are arranged in rows along the snail's tongue and are used like a file to saw or slice through the snail's food.

Cicadas have their hearing organs in their stomachs, at the base of the abdomen. Crickets have their hearing organs in their knees, or, more precisely, in the oval slit of their forelegs.

Birds played a role in aerial warfare during World War I. Because of their acute hearing, parrots were kept on the Eiffel Tower to warn of approaching aircraft long before the planes were heard or seen by human spotters.

There are about 40 different muscles in a birds wing.

It takes 4,000 crocuses to produce a single ounce of saffron.

Soldiers arrived to fight the Battle of Marne in World War I not on foot or by military airplane or military vehicle--but by taxi cabs. France took over all the taxi cabs in Paris to get soldiers to the front.

At sea level there are 2,000 pounds of air pressure on each square foot of your body.

Because its tongue is too short for its beak, the toucan must juggle its food before swallowing it.

The Hershey Foods Corporation can produce 30 three million Hershey's Kisses in one day of production.

Rice is the chief food for half the people in the world.

The nutritional value of squash and pumpkin seeds improves with age. These seeds are among the few
foods that increase in nutritional value as they decompose.

Honey is the only food that doesn't spoil.

Talmudists believe Adam and Eve resided in paradise a mere 12 hours before they were kicked out.

With few exceptions, birds do not sing while on the ground. They sing during flight or while sitting on an object off the ground.

Lewis Carroll wrote 98,721 letters in the last 37 years of his life.

Cinderella is known as "Tuna" in Finland.

A bear has 42 teeth.

DOG TRIVIA

Dogs might nip at a toad, but they won't eat them. The experts suspect that there's something emitted from the toad's skin that makes the dog let go instantly.

Dog urine damages grass, shrubs and other plant life due to "urine burn." It's caused by ammonia and urea contained in canine urine. The urine makes the soil too acidic.

There's a law in Chicago that prohibits folks from feeding whiskey to canines.

They can't be sure why, but it is best to put a dog up on a table to groom it. It's not just for the groomer's comfort. Something about the altitude simmers a pup down.

When two dogs approach each other, the one that will be in charge wags its tail very slowly, rather than that quick wag-wag-wag. If both wag slowly, watch out.

It's against the law for dogs to chase or even worry squirrels on the grounds of the state capitol in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The chief of police in Wingate, North Carolina, is required by law to execute any dog he finds running in heat if he can't find the owner in four days.

The greyhound can reach speeds of up to 41.7 miles per hour.

Dogs don't "sweat with their tongues" as is often said. The only sweat glands of significance on a dog are in the soles of their feet. Dogs cool themselves primarily by rapid breathing, which is why they pant after running. When a dog sticks its tongue out, he does so because it is moist and evaporation helps to cool it...not because he is sweating.

The "sic" command comes from a corruption of the German word "such," pronounced "sook," which means seek or search. The meaning and pronunciation have been altered over time.

Dogs tilt their heads when you talk to them because they want you to know they are listening--without staring at you (as that's a sign of aggression.) The tilt might also aide them in seeing us better, as each of their eyes sees half the world with little overlap in the fields of vision.

Dogs put their heads out of car windows out of visual curiosity. (They like a cool breeze, too.) But blowing in a dog's ear is another matter. It can be painful because of the sound of the blowing--the frequency drives them nuts.

In Bristol, England, there is a law stating that a dog (but not a cat) has the right to observe sexual activities and can't be kicked out of bed just for getting in the way.

The expression "dog days" goes back to the Romans, who believed that in the hottest part of the summer, Sirius (the "dog star" and the brightest star in the constellation) lent its own heat to the heat of the sun. The Roman "dog days" lasted from July 3 to August 11.

Dogs in the wild seldom, if ever, bark. Only those dogs who have come into contact with humans or other domesticated dogs exhibit this behavior. Wolves, foxes, wild dogs and other canines only howl, growl, snarl, yelp or whine, but do not bark. The reason for this is not known, but it is believed the barking sounds of domesticated dogs are an attempt to imitate human sounds.

A barking dog is not usually a sign of aggressive behavior. Barking is the domesticated dogs' alarm to others in his pack--canine or human--that something is wrong or that an intruder is present. It is the silent, snarling or growling dog that is actually most dangerous.

The word "terrier" comes from the Latin root "terra," meaning earth.

The Kerry Blue is from County Kerry, Ireland.

"Dog kennel" is redundant. The Latin "canis" (dog) served as the base for the word "canile" (dog house.) This word entered French as "kenel", which the English changed to kennel. Thus, a kennel couldn't technically be for anything else but dogs.

By the way, the Canary Islands were so named because of the many wild dogs which roamed it when the Romans landed there. (Recall, "dog" in Latin was "canis"...so they called the islands "canaria insula"--"the island of dogs.")

Sixty Amazing-but-True Facts!



In the weightlessness of space a frozen pea will explode if it comes in contact with Pepsi.

The increased electricity used by modern appliances is causing a shift in the Earth's magnetic field. By the year 2327, the North Pole will be located in mid-Kansas, while the South Pole will be just off the coast of East Africa.

The idea for "tribbles" in "Star Trek" came from gerbils, since some gerbils are actually born pregnant.

Male rhesus monkeys often hang from tree branches by their amazing prehensile penises.

Johnny Plessey batted .331 for the Cleveland Spiders in 1891, even though he spent the entire season batting with a rolled-up, lacquered copy of the Toledo Post-Dispatch.

Smearing a small amount of dog feces on an insect bite will relieve the itching and swelling.

The Boeing 747 is capable of flying upside-down if it weren't for the fact that the wings would shear off when trying to roll it over.

The trucking company Elvis Presley worked at as a young man was owned by Frank Sinatra.

The only golf course on the island of Tonga has 15 holes, and there's no penalty if a monkey steals your golf ball.

Legislation passed during WWI making it illegal to say "gesundheit" to a sneezer was never repealed.

Manatees possess vocal chords which give them the ability to speak like humans, but don't do so because they have no ears with which to hear the sound.

SCUBA divers cannot pass gas at depths of 33 feet or below.

Catfish are the only animals that naturally have an ODD number of whiskers.

Replying more than 100 times to the same piece of spam e-mail will overwhelm the sender's system and interfere with their ability to send any more spam.

Polar bears can eat as many as 86 penguins in a single sitting.

The first McDonald's restaurant opened for business in 1952 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and featured the McHaggis sandwich.

The Air Force's F-117 fighter uses aerodynamics discovered during research into how bumblebees fly.

You *can* get blood from a stone, but only if contains at least 17 percent bauxite.

Silly Putty was "discovered" as the residue left behind after the first latex condoms were produced. It's not widely publicized for obvious reasons.

Approximately one-sixth of your life is spent on Wednesdays.

The skin needed for elbow transplants must be taken from the scrotum of a cadaver.

The sport of jai alai originated from a game played by Incan priests who held cats by their tails and swung at leather balls. The cats would instinctively grab at the ball with their claws, thus enabling players to catch them.

A cat's purr has the same romance-enhancing frequency as the voice of singer Barry White.

The typewriter was invented by Hungarian immigrant Qwert Yuiop, who left his "signature" on the keyboard.

The volume of water that the Giant Sequoia tree consumes in a 24-hour period contains enough suspended minerals to pave 17.3 feet of a 4-lane concrete freeway.

King Henry VIII slept with a gigantic axe.

Because printed materials are being replaced by CD-ROM, microfiche and the Internet, libraries that previously sank into their foundations under the weight of their books are now in danger of collapsing in extremely high winds.

In 1843, a Parisian street mime got stuck in his imaginary box and consequently died of starvation.

Touch-tone telephone keypads were originally planned to have buttons for Police and Fire Departments, but they were replaced with * and # when the project was cancelled in favor of developing the 911 system.

Human saliva has a boiling point three times that of regular water.

Calvin, of the "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip, was patterned after President Calvin Coolidge, who had a pet tiger as a boy.

Watching an hour-long soap opera burns more calories than watching a three-hour baseball game.

Until 1978, Camel cigarettes contained minute particles of real camels.

You can actually sharpen the blades on a pencil sharpener by wrapping your pencils in aluminum foil before inserting them.

To human taste buds, Zima is virtually indistinguishable from zebra urine.

Seven out of every ten hockey-playing Canadians will lose a tooth during a game. For Canadians who don't play hockey, that figure drops to five out of ten.

A dog's naked behind leaves absolutely no bacteria when pressed against carpet.

A team of University of Virginia researchers released a study promoting the practice of picking one's nose, claiming that the health benefits of keeping nasal passages free from infectious blockages far outweigh the negative social connotations.

Among items left behind at Osama bin Laden's headquarters in Afghanistan were 27 issues of Mad Magazine. Al Qaeda members have admitted that bin Laden is reportedly an avid reader.

Urine from male cape water buffaloes is so flammable that some tribes use it for lantern fuel.

At the first World Cup championship in Uruguay, 1930, the soccer balls were actually monkey skulls wrapped in paper and leather.

Every Labrador retriever dreams about bananas.

If you put a bee in a film canister for two hours, it will go blind and leave behind its weight in honey.

Due to the angle at which the optic nerve enters the brain, staring at a blue surface during sex greatly increases the intensity of orgasms.

Never hold your nose and cover your mouth when sneezing, as it can blow out your eyeballs.

Centuries ago, purchasing real estate often required having one or more limbs amputated in order to prevent the purchaser from running away to avoid repayment of the loan. Hence an expensive purchase was said to cost "an arm and a leg."

When Mahatma Gandhi died, an autopsy revealed five gold Krugerrands in his small intestine.

Aardvarks are allergic to radishes, but only during summer months.

Coca-Cola was the favored drink of Pharaoh Ramses. An inscription found in his tomb, when translated, was found to be almost identical to the recipe used today.

If you part your hair on the right side, you were born to be carnivorous. If you part it on the left, your physical and psychological make-up is that of a vegetarian.

When immersed in liquid, a dead sparrow will make a sound like a crying baby.

In WWII the US military planned to airdrop over France propaganda in the form of Playboy magazine, with coded messages hidden in the models' turn-ons and turn-offs. The plan was scrapped because of a staple shortage due to rationing of metal.

Although difficult, it's possible to start a fire by rapidly rubbing together two Cool Ranch Doritos.

Napoleon's favorite type of wood was knotty chestnut.

The world's smartest pig, owned by a mathematics teacher in Madison, WI, memorized the multiplication tables up to 12.

Due to the natural "momentum" of the ocean, saltwater fish cannot swim backwards.

In ancient Greece, children of wealthy families were dipped in olive oil at birth to keep them hairless throughout their lives.

It is nearly three miles farther to fly from Amarillo, Texas to Louisville, Kentucky than it is to return from Louisville to Amarillo.

The "nine lives" attributed to cats is probably due to their having nine primary whiskers.

The original inspiration for Barbie dolls comes from dolls developed by German propagandists in the late 1930s to impress young girls with the ideal notions of Aryan features. The proportions for Barbie were actually based on those of Eva Braun.

The Venezuelan brown bat can detect and dodge individual raindrops in mid-flight, arriving safely back at his cave completely dry.

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