Stan's Shots: Absolutely Useless Facts

Won't vouch for any of these, but they are interesting never-the-less.

1. The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time TV were Fred and Wilma Flintstone.

2. Coca-Cola was originally green.

3. Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the US Treasury.

4. Men can read smaller print than women can...women can hear better.

5. The state with the highest percentage of people who walk to work: Alaska

6. The percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28% (now get this..)

7. The percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38%

8. The cost of raising a medium-size dog to the age of eleven: $6,400

9. The average number of people airborne over the US any given hour: 61,000 (wonder if this one is still true)

10. Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

11. The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.

12. The youngest pope was 11 years old.

13. The first novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer.

14. Those San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments.

15. Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history:
Spades - King David
Hearts - Charlemagne
Clubs - Alexander the Great
Diamonds - Julius Caesar

16. 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

17. If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle. If the horse has one front leg in the air the person died as a result of wounds received in battle. If the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

18. Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 years later.

19. "I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

20. Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that make them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.

21. Until the St. Louis Rams, no NFL team which plays its home games in a domed stadium has ever won a Super bowl.

22. 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-stars Game.

1) Look at your zipper. See the initials YKK? It stands for Yoshida Kogyo Kabushibibaisha, the world's largest zipper manufacturer.

2) 40 percent of McDonald's profits come from the sales of Happy Meals.

3) 315 entries in Webster's 1996 Dictionary were misspelled.

4) On the average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily.

5) Chocolate kills dogs! True, chocolate affects a dog's heart and nervous system. A few ounces is enough to kill a small sized dog.

6) Ketchup was sold in the 1830's as a medicine.

7) Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time.

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

9) There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.

10) Leonardo da Vinci invented scissors. Also, it took him 10 years to paint Mona Lisa's lips.

11) Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to slow a film down so you could see his moves. That's the opposite of the norm.

12) The original name for the butterfly was "flutterby"!

13) By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you can't sink in quicksand.

14) Mosquito repellents don't repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito's sensors so they don't know you're there.

15) Dentists recommend that a toothbrush be kept at least six feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush.

16) The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's gum.

17) Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than the entire Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.

18) Marilyn Monroe had six toes on one foot.

19) Adolf Hitler's mother seriously considered having an abortion but was talked out of it by her doctor.

20) The three most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.

21) To escape the grip of a crocodile's jaws, prick your fingers into its eyeballs. It will let you go instantly.

22) The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.

23) The "pound" (#) key on your keyboard is called an octothorp.

24) The only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible is the cat.

25) Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

26) The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.

27) "Dreamt" is the only word in the English language that ends in "mt".

28) It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

29) In Chinese, the KFC slogan "finger lickin' good" comes out as "eat your fingers off".

30) A cockroach can live for 10 days without a head.

31) We shed 40 pounds of skin a lifetime.

32) Yo-Yos were once used as weapons in the Philippines.

33) Mexico City sinks abut 10 inches a year.

34) Brains are more active sleeping than watching TV.

35) Blue is the favorite color of 80 percent of Americans.

36) When a person shakes their head from side to side, he is saying "yes" in Sri Lanka.

37) There are more chickens than people in the world.

38) The thumbnail grows the slowest, and the middle nail grows the fastest.

39) There are more telephones than people in Washington, D.C.

40) The average four year-old child asks over four hundred questions a day.

41) The average person presses the snooze button on their alarm clock three Times each morning.

42) The three wealthiest families in the world have more assets than the Combined wealth of the forty-eight poorest nations.

43) The first owner of the Marlboro cigarette Company died of lung cancer.

44) Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

45) The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.

46) Our eyes remain the same size from birth onward, but our noses and ears Never stop growing.

47) You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching TV.

48) A person will die from total lack of sleep sooner than from starvation. Death will occur about 10 days without sleep, while starvation takes a Few weeks.

49) Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.

50) The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows.

51) When the moon is directly overhead, you weigh slightly less.

52) Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, never telephoned His wife or mother because they were both deaf.

53) A psychology student in New York rented out her spare room to a Carpenter in order to nag him constantly and study his reactions. After Weeks of needling, he snapped and beat her repeatedly with an axe Leaving her mentally retarded.

54) "I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language

55) Colgate faced a big obstacle marketing toothpaste in Spanish speaking Countries because Colgate translates into the command "go hang Yourself."

56) Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different.

57) "Bookkeeper" is the only word in English language with three consecutive Double letters.

58) Right handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left handed People do.

Q. What occurs more often in December than any other month?
A. Conception.

Q. What separates "60 Minutes," on CBS from every other TV show?
A. No theme song

Q. Half of all Americans live within 50 miles of what?
A. Their birthplace.

Q. Most boat owners name their boats. What is the most popular boat name requested?
A. Obsession

Q. If you were to spell out numbers, how far would you have to go until you would find the letter "A"?
A. One thousand

Q. What do bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers, and laser printers all have in common?
A. All invented by women.

Q. What is the only food that doesn't spoil?
A. Honey

Q. There are more collect calls on this day than any other day of the year?
A. Father's Day

Q. What trivia fact about Mel Blanc (voice of Bugs Bunny) is the most ironic?
A. He is allergic to carrots

Only about 5% of the salt produced end up on the dinner table. The rest is used for packing meat, building roads, feeding livestock, tanning leather, and manufacturing glass, soap, ash and washing compounds. Source: "2201 Fascinating Facts"
The yo-yo originated in the Philippines, where it was used as a weapon in hunting.
All of the cobble stones that used to line the streets in New York were originally weighting stones put in the hulls of Belgian ships to keep an even keel.
Blimp useless facts. There are fourteen blimps in the world.Ten of the fourteen blimps are in the United States. The biggest existing blimp is the Fuji Film blimp.

The top layer of a wedding cake, known as the groom's cake, is usually is a fruit cake so it will last until the couple's first anniversary, when they will eat it.

Months that begins with a Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th."
The dial tone of a normal telephone is in the key of "F".
Easter is the first Sunday after the first Saturday after the first full moon after the equinox. (The equinox is quite often March 21, but can also occur on the March 20 or 22.)
The San Fransisco Cable cars and the St. Charles streetcar line in New Orleans are the nation's two mobile National Monuments
Libra, the Scales, is the only inanimate symbol in the zodiac.
The ashes of the average cremated person weigh nine pounds.
In the 1940s, the FCC assigned television's Channel 1 to mobile services (two-way radios in taxicabs, for instance) but did not re-number the other channel assignments. That is why your TV set has channels 2 and up but no channel 1.
The average sixty minute audio cassette tape has 562.5 feet of tape in it.
If you told someone that they were one in a million, you'd be saying there were about 1,800 of them in China.
The launching mechanism of a carrier ship that helps planes to take off, could throw a pickup truck over a mile.
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 quartz crystal in your wristwatch vibrates 32,768 times a second.
The side of a hammer is a cheek.
The bread slots in a toaster are toast wells.
A canton is the blue field behind the stars.
A bonnet is the cap on the fire hydrant.
Non-dairy creamer is flammable.
If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne, it will keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom.
Before Prohibition, Shlitz Brewery owned more property in Chicago than anyone else, except The Catholic Church.
Figlet, an ASCII font converter program, stands for Frank, Ian and Glenn's LETters.
There are 1,929,770,126,028,800 different color combinations possible on a Rubik's Cube.
The world's largest K-Mart is on the island of Guam.
The first Bowie knife was forged at Washington, Arkansas.
A standard grave is 7'8" x 3'2" x 6"
All gondolas in Venice, Italy must be painted black, unless they belong to a high official.
You can make a glass of apple cider with three apples.
More money is printed daily for the Monopoly game than by the U.S. Treasury.
In the game Monopoly, the most money you can lose in one travel around the board (normal game rules, going to jail only once) is $26,040. The most money you can lose in one turn is $5070.
A man named Ed Peterson is the inventor of the Egg McMuffin.
Liquid paper was invented by Mike Nesmith (of the Monkees)'s mother, Bette Nesmith Graham, in 1951.
Every male over the 18 is considered part of the Arizona Militia according to state constitution.
Craven Walker invented the lava lamp, and its contents are colored wax and water.
In order for a deck of cards to be mixed up enough to play with properly, it should be shuffled at least seven times.
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.
The national average ACT score is 17.
The bubbles in Guiness Beer sink to the bottom rather than float to the top like all other beers. No one knows why.
The right side of a boat was called the starboard side due to the fact that the astronavigators used to stand out on the plank (which was on the right side) to get an unobstructed view of the stars. The left side was called the port side because that was the side that you put in on at the port. This was so that they didn't knock off the starboard!
The now retired architect, then a draftsman, who drew the plans for the original "Golden Arches" (McDonalds) building in Fontana, California, in the early 1950s, was Charles W. Fish.
The next-to-last event is the penultimate, and the second-to-last event is the antepenultimate.
Everyone in the Middle Ages believed -- as Aristotle had -- that the heart was the seat of intelligence.

In many ancient religions the mistletoe was regarded as a sacred plant. The Druids believed that a sprig of mistletoe fastened above a doorway would ward off all sorts of ills, such as witchcraft, disease, bad luck and fire. In addition, it would enhance the hospitality -- and fertility -- of the household. Hence the English Christmas custom of kissing under the mistletoe.

But to the Norsemen the mistletoe was a baleful plant, because it caused the death of Baldur, the shining god of youth.

Nearly 50% of all bank robberies take place on Friday.
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 the New World. Source: "2201 Fascinating Facts"
A device invented as a primitive steam engine by the Greek engineer Hero, about the time of the birth of Christ, is used today as a rotating lawn sprinkler.
There are at least a half-million more automobiles in Los Angeles than there are people.
In the next seven days, roughly 800 Americans will be injured by their jewelry.
Personal letters make up only 4.5 percent of the mail delivered by the U.S. Postal Service.
During the time that the atomic bomb was being hatched by the United States at Alamogordo,
New Mexico, applicants for routine jobs like janitor were disqualified if they could read. Illiteracy; in other words, was a job requirement. The reason: The authorities didn't want their trash or other papers read.
The Pilgrims refused to eat lobsters because they believed they were really big insects. Source:
The foundations of the great European cathedrals go down as far as forty or fifty feet. In some instances, they form a mass of stone as great as that of the visible building above the ground.
A person uses more household energy shaving with a hand razor at a sink (because of the water power, the water pump and so on) than he would by using an electric razor.
According to the Recruitment Code of the U. S. Navy, anyone "bearing an obscene and indecent" tattoo will be rejected. Source:
There are only thirteen blimps in the world. Nine of the thirteen blimps are in the United States.
The United States government keeps its supply of silver at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY.
The familiar piece of wood known as a "two-by-four" is not two inches by four inches. Its actual size is one and one half by three and one half. The reason it's smaller than two-by-four is a long standing custom to measure wood before it's seasoned and planed.
Artificial Christmas trees have outsold real ones every year since 1991.
The college degree is called a "Bachelor's" degree after the original meaning of bachelor which was a young apprentice. Since the Bachelor's is the first degree issued, coming before a Master's or Doctor's degree, that first degree became known as a Bachelor's degree.
In Turkey the color of mourning is violet. In most Moslem countries and in China it is white.
If a family had 2 servants or less in the U.S. in 1900, census takers recorded it as "lower middle-class."
Although people in the majority of countries of the world drive on the right side of roads, there are some fifty nations in which people drive on the left. These include England and many of the former English colonies such as Australia and New Zealand -- but not the U.S. or Canada. There are several non-English countries where people also drive on the left including Japan.
Ever wondered where the phrase "two bits" came from? Some of the coins used in the American colonies before the Revolutionary War were Spanish dollars, which could be cut into pieces, or bits. Since two pieces equaled one-fourth of a dollar, the expression "two bits" came into being as a name for 25¢.
Coca-Cola contains neither coca nor cola.
Pepsi originally contained pepsin, therefore the name!
Ivory bar soap floating was a mistake. They had been over mixing the soap formula causing excess air bubbles that made it float. Customers wrote and told how much they loved that it floated, and it has floated ever since.
The YKK on the zipper of your Levis stands for Yoshida Kogyo Kabushibibaisha, the worlds largest zipper manufacturer.
You use an average of 43 muscles for a frown.
You use an average of 17 muscles for a smile.
Every two thousand frowns creates one wrinkle.
The average human blinks his eyes 6,205,000 times each year.
The average human produces a quart of saliva a day or 10,000 gallons in a lifetime.
The average human's heart will beat 3000 million times in their lifetime.
The average human will pump 48 million gallons of blood in their lifetime.

There are 26 calories in a Hershey Kiss
A one minute kiss burns 26 calories.
Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.
The average person will consume one hundred tons of food and twelve thousand gallons of water in a lifetime.
The average human body contains enough:

Iron to make a 3 inch nail
Sulphur to kill all fleas on an average dog
Carbon to make 900 pencils
Potassium to fire a toy cannon
Fat to make 7 bars of soap
Phosphorus to make 2,200 match heads

Water to fill a ten gallon tank

If you toss a penny 10,000 times, it will not be heads 5,000 times, but more like 4,950. The heads picture weighs more, so it ends up on the bottom.
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.
There are four cars and ten light posts on the back of a ten-dollar bill.
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.
A quarter has 119 grooves around the edge.
A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
The ridges on the sides of coins are called reeding or milling.
The numbers '172' can be found on the back of the U.S. $5 dollar bill in the bushes at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.
The face of a penny can hold about thirty drops of water.
Nine pennies weigh exactly one ounce.
The U.S. Mint in Denver, Colorado is the only mint that marks its pennies
The original fifty cent piece in Australian decimal currency had around $2.00 worth of silver in it before it was replaced with a less expensive twelve sided coin.
Pocahontas appeared on the back of the $20 bill in 1875.
Woodpecker scalps, porpoise teeth and giraffe tails have all been used as money.
The Australian $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 notes are made out of plastic.
The car in the foreground on the back of a $10 bill is a 1925 Huptmobile.
Money is made of woven linen, not paper.
The first U.S. coin to bear the words "United States of America," was a penny piece made in 1727. It was also inscribed with the plain-spoken motto: "Mind Your Own Business."
97% of all paper money in the US contains traces of cocaine.
How valuable is that penny you found laying on the ground? If it takes just a second to pick it up a person could make $36.00 per hour just picking up pennies!
Since 1874 the mints of the United States have been making coins for foreign governments, whose combined orders have at times exceeded the volume of domestic requirements
Vietnamese currency consists only of paper money; no coins.
The U.S. shreds seven thousand tons of worn-out currency each year
Americans spend $10 million each day on potato chips.
Over 30 million people in the US "suffer" from Diastima. Diastima is having a gap between your front teeth.
Seventy percent of the dust in your home consists of shed human skin.
Each square inch of human skin contains seventy-two feet of nerves.
The letters KGB stand for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti.
Glass flutes do not expand with humidity so their owners are spared the nuisance of tuning them.
Neck ties were first worn in Croatia.That's why they were called cravats (CRO-vats).
Urea is found in human urine and dalmatian dogs and nowhere else.
If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.
Sarsaparilla is the root that flavors root beer.
Cranberry Jello is the only Jello flavor that comes from real fruit, not artificial flavoring.
Soldiers from every country salute with their right hand.
Cyano-acrylate glues (Super glues) were invented by accident. The researcher was trying to make optical coating materials, and would test their properties by putting them between two prisms and shining light through them. When he tried the cyano-acrylate, he couldn't get the prisms apart.
Moisture, not air, causes super glue to dry.
A wedding ring is generally exempt by law from inclusion among the assets in a bankruptcy estate. That means that a wedding ring can't be seized by creditors, no matter how much the bankrupt person owes.
Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully ripened cranberry can be dribbled like a basketball.
To "testify" was based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement made by swearing on their testicles.
Benito Mussolini would ward off the evil eye by touching his testicles.
Both Hitler and Napoleon were missing one testicle
The tailless dinner jacket was invented in Tuxedo Park, New York. Thus it is called the "tuxedo dinner jacket" and is named after the town...not the other way around.
There is no such thing as naturally blue food, even blueberries are purple.
The tango originated as a dance between two men (for partnering practice).
White Out was invented by the mother of Mike Nesmith (Formerly of the Monkees)
The first electric Christmas lights were created by a telephone company PBX installer.
Back in the old days, candles were used to decorate Christmas trees. This was obviously very dangerous. Telephone employees are trained to be safety conscious. This installer took the lights from an old switchboard, connected them together, strung them on the tree, and hooked them to a battery.
Venetian blinds were invented in Japan.
Welsh mercenary bow men in the medieval period only wore one shoe at a time.
On a trip to the South Sea islands, French painter Paul Gauguin stopped off briefly in Central America, where he worked as a laborer on the Panama Canal.
The A&W of root beer fame stands for Allen and Wright.
A peanut is not a nut; it is a legume.
It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.
A Boeing 747 jumbo jet weighs 55 times as much as an average African elephant.
Marcel Prousthave had a swordfish at home.
The traditional symbol of the pawnbroker -- three golden balls -- is thought to be derived from the coat of the arms of the Medici family, who ruled the Italian city of Florence between the 15th and 16th centuries. The symbol was spread by the Lombard's -- Italian bankers, goldsmiths and moneylenders who set up businesses in medieval London.
There is actually a word for a 64th note --a hemidemisemiquaver.
Carnegie Mellon University offers bag piping as a major. The instructor is James McIntosh, who is a member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, and who began bag piping at age 11.
A large flawless emerald is worth more than a similarly large flawless diamond.
The most sensitive finger is the forefinger.
The metal part at the end of a pencil is twenty percent sulfur.
The metal part of a lamp that surrounds the bulb and supports the shade is called a harp.
Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes.
The growth rate of some bamboo plants can reach three feet (91.44 cm) per day.
When your sink is full, the little hole that lets the water drain, instead of flowing over the side, is called a "percolator".
The guards of some of the emperors of Byzantium were Vikings.
Canola oil is actually rape seed oil but the name was changed in Canada for marketing reasons.
7.5 tons of gold is used each year in the US to make class rings.
Before 1800 there were no separately designed shoes for right and left feet.
One cord of wood -- that's a 4x4x8 foot stack -- produces only 250 copies of the Sunday New York Times.
It takes one fifteen-to twenty-year-old tree to produce seven hundred paper grocery bags.
The world's smallest tree is the dwarf willow, which grows to two inches tall on the tundra of Greenland.
There are three times as many households in the United States without telephones as there are without television sets.
The Ramses brand condom is named after the great Pharaoh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.
'Crack' gets it name because it crackles when you smoke it.
Heroin is the brand name of morphine once marketed by Bayer.
Marijuana is Spanish for 'Mary Jane.'
The biggest bell is the "Tsar Kolokol" cast in the Kremlin in 1733. It weighs 216 tons, but alas, is cracked and has never been rung. The bell was being stored in a Moscow shed which caught fire. To "save" it the caretakers decided to throw water on the bell. This did not succeed as the water hit the superheated metal and a giant piece immediately cracked off, destroying the bell forever.
Grapes explode when you put them in the microwave.
The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
Thomas Edison got patents for a method of making concrete furniture and a cigar which was supposed to burn forever.
Velcro was invented by a Swiss who was inspired by the way burrs attached to clothing.
The amount of tropical rain forest cut down each year is an area the size of Tennessee.
The hieroglyph for 100,000 is a tadpole.
The concerti on the two Voyager probes' information discs are performed by famed
Canadian pianist Glenn Gould.
The Phillips-head screwdriver was invented in Oregon.
The Red sea was originally named the Reed Sea.
A group of officers is called a mess.
The raised reflective dots in the middle of highways are called Botts dots.
The Amazon rain forest produces half the world's oxygen supply.
Tomb robbers believed that knocking Egyptian sarcophagi's noses off would stall curses.
Trivia is the Roman goddess of sorcery, hounds and... the crossroads
The physically smallest post office in the United States is in Ochopee, Florida in the heart of the everglades.
The allele for six fingers and toes is dominant in humans.
The longest chapter in the Bible is Psalm 119.
The shortest verse in the Bible is "Jesus wept."
Only three angels are mentioned by name in the Bible: Gabriel, Michael, and Lucifer.
Some biblical scholars believe that Aramaic (the language of the ancient Bible) did not contain an easy way to say "many things" and used a term which has come down to us as 40. This means that when the bible -- in many places -- refers to "40 days," they meant many days.
The book of Esther in the Bible is the only book which does not mention the name of God.
There are eight different sizes of champagne bottles and the largest is called a Nebuchadnezzar (after the Biblical king who put Daniel's three friends into the oven).
Turnips turn green when sunburnt.
Impotence is legal grounds for divorce in 24 American states.
In 1969, the last Corvair to come off the assembly line was painted gold.
Native speakers of Japanese learn Spanish much more easily than they learn English.
Native speakers of English learn Spanish much more easily than they learn Japanese.
All the dirt from the foundation to build the World Trade Center in NYC was dumped into the Hudson River to form the community now known as Battery City Park,
Each day the World Trade Center Towers in New York burn enough electricity to supply a U.S. city of one hundred thousand people.
The Holland and Lincoln Tunnels under the Hudson River connecting New Jersey and New York are an engineering feat. The air circulators in the tunnels circulate fresh air completely every ninety seconds!
The Soviet Sukhoi-34 is the first strike fighter with a toilet in it.
The only social fraternity founded during the Civil War was Theta Xi fraternity, at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York in 1864.
The Hudson River along the island of Manhattan flows in either direction depending upon the tide.
Several buildings in Manhattan have their own zip code! The World Trade Center has several.
The "heat" of peppers is rated on the Scoville scale.
Ketchup was once used as a medicine in the United States. In the 1830s it was sold as Dr. Miles's Compound Extract of Tomato.
Ben and Jerry's send the waste from making ice cream to local pig farmers to use as feed. Pigs love the stuff, except for one flavor: Mint Oreo.
According to the ceremonial customs of Orthodox Judaism, it is officially sundown when you cannot tell the difference between a black thread and a red one.
In most advertisements, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10 because then the hands of the watch frame the brand name on the watch face.
The number of minutes of telephone calling in an average business day is 9,500,000,000.
There are currently more than thirty thousand people in the United States that are one hundred years of age or older.
Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
The longest time someone has typed on a typewriter continuously is 264 hrs., set by Violet Gibson Burns.
US Airlines owes their passengers 870,000,000,000 frequent flyer miles.
The average number of passengers airborne over the US each hour is 61,000.
The little bags of netting for gas lanterns (called 'mantles') are radioactive--so much so that they will set of an alarm at a nuclear reactor.
A full seven percent of the entire Irish barley crop goes to the production of Guinness beer.
In medieval England beer was often served with breakfast. Source: "2201 Fascinating Facts"
The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
Images for picture stamps in the United States are commissioned by the United States
Postal Service Department of Philatelic Fulfillment.
Great Britain was the first country to issue postage stamps. Hence, the postage stamps of Britain are the only stamps in the world not to bear the name of the country of origin. However, every stamp carries a relief image or a silhouette of the monarch's head instead.
The housefly hums in the middle octave, key of F.
The international telephone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.
Each year there is one ton of cement poured for each man, woman, and child in the world.
At McDonald's in New Zealand, they serve apricot pies instead of cherry ones.
Pickled herrings were invented in 1375.
The earliest document in Latin in a woman's handwriting (it is from the first century A.D.) is an invitation to a birthday party.
A family of six died in Oregon during WW II as a result of a Japanese balloon bomb.
Jet lag was once called boat lag, back before jets existed.
The world's second largest pipe organ is located at the Organ Grinder on 82nd Avenue in Portland, Oregon.
Games Slayter, a Purdue graduate, invented fiberglass.

One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today is because cotton growers in the 30s lobbied against hemp farmers -- they saw it as competition. It is not chemically addictive as is nicotine, alcohol, or caffeine.

The Basset Horn, a kind of alto clarinet, was named after its inventor -- a man named Horn. "Basset" is from "Basetto," or "little bass" in Italian.
Cephalacaudal recapitulation is the reason our extremeties develop faster than the rest of us
The term the "Bogey Man will get you" comes from the Boogey people, who still inhabit an area of Indonesia. These people still act as pirates today and attack ships that pass. Thus the term spread "if you don't watch out the Bogey man will get you."
In-grown toe nails are hereditary.
The expression "What in tarnation" comes from the original meaning: "What in eternal damnation"
The "chapters" of the New Testament were not there originally. When monks in medieval times translated it from the Greek, they numbered the pages in each "book."
Yucatan, as in the peninsula, is from Maya "u" + "u" + "uthaan," meaning "listen to how they speak," what the Mayasaid when they first heard the Spaniards.
The term, "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" is from Ancient Rome.The only rule during wrestling matches was, "No eye gouging." Everything else was allowed, but the only way to be disqualified was to poke someone's eye out.
Only 1/3 of the people that can twitch their ears can twitch only one at a time.
If you lace your shoes from the inside to the outside the fit will be snugger around your big toe.
Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously
Carbonated water, with nothing else in it, can dissolve limestone, talc, and many other low-Moh's hardness minerals. Coincidentally, carbonated water is the main ingredient in soda pop.
If you were born in Los Alamos, New Mexico during the Manhattan project (where they made the atomic bomb), your birth place was listed as a post office box in Albuquerque.
In Iran Jaya exists a tribe of tall, white people whose parrots are a warning sign against intruders
Ballroom dancing is a major at Brigham Young University.
Professional ballerinas use about twelve pairs of toe shoes per week.
M&M's were developed so that soldiers could eat candy without getting their fingers sticky.
M&M's stands for the last names of Forrest Mars, Sr., then candy maker, and his associate Bruce Murrie.
The estimated number of M&M's sold each day in the United States is 200,000,000.
The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WW II fighter pilots in the South Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9 yards."
The symbol on the "pound" key (#) is called anoctothorpe.
Ham radio operators got the term "ham" coined from the expression "ham-fisted operators", a term used to describe early radio users who sent Morse code (i.e. pounded their fists).
S.O.S. doesn't stand for "Save Our Ship" or "Save Our Souls" -- It was just chosen by an 1908 international conference on Morse Code because the letters S and O were easy to remember and just about anyone could key it and read it, S =dot dot dot, O = dash dash dash..
The world's largest four-faced clock sits a top the Allen-Bradley plant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Almonds are members of the peach family.
The anti-fungal, nystatin, which is sometime used for treating thrush, is named after New York State Institute for Health (Acronym)
It takes about a half a gallon of water to cook macaroni, and about a gallon to clean the pot.
The wheat that produces a one-pound loaf of bread requires two tons of water to grow.
The top three cork-producing countries are Spain, Portugal and Algeria. (Cork comes from trees.)
Only thirty percent of the famous Maryland blue crabs are actually from Maryland, the rest are from North Carolina and Virginia.
Jelly Belly jelly beans were the first jelly beans in outer space when they went up with astronauts in the June 21,1983 voyage of the space shuttle Challenger (the same voyage as the first American woman in space, Sally Ride).
The average ear of corn has eight-hundred kernels arranged in sixteen rows.
Kerimski Church in Finland is world's biggest church made of wood.
The St. Louis Gateway Arch had a projected death toll while it was being built. No one died.
The word "noon" came from an old church term "none" meaning three. There was a monastic order that was so devout that they declared they would not eat until that time. Since they rang the bells indicating time, "none" came earlier and earlier. The towns people called mid-day "noon" to ridicule them.
Tribeca in Manhattan stands for TRIangle BElow CAnal street.
Soho stands for SOuth of HOuston street.
Columbia University is the second largest land owner in New York City, after the Catholic Church.
The world's largest wine cask is in Heidelberg, Germany.
Because their work was so physically demanding, slave sugar-cane cutters were the South's most costly field hands. At one point, their price became so high on the New Orleans slave market that the Louisiana planter tried to hire Irish and German immigrants instead. This plan backfired when the hired workers went on strike for double pay right in the middle of the sugar harvest.
Bananas do not grow on trees, but on rhizomes.
The Statue of Liberty's tablet is two feet thick.
There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.
Way back when they were using marble columns, the people selling the columns would carve out the centers and fill it with wax. So the people buying them started asking "Is it without wax?" Or in other words "Are you sincere?"
A coat hanger is 44 inches long if straightened
The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
The smallest mushroom's name is "Hop-low."
Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them use to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired."
Residents of the island of Lesbos are Lesbosians, rather than Lesbians. (Of course, lesbians are called lesbians because Sappho was from Lesbos.)
A-1 Steak Sauce contains both orange peel and raisins.
The straw was probably invented by Egyptian brewers to taste in-process beer without removing the fermenting ingredients which floated on the top of the container.
A Chinese checkerboard has 121 holes.
The lot numbers for the cyanide-tainted Tylenol capsules scare back in 1982 were
MC2880 and 1910MD.
The ball assembly on top of a flagpole is called the truck.
Dirty Harry's badge number is 2211.
Most Americans' car horns beep in the key of F.
The first fossilized specimen of Australopithecus afarenisis was named Lucy after the paleontologists' favorite song, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, by the Beatles.
The "Calabash" pipe, most often associated with Sherlock Holmes, was not used by him until William Gillette (an American) portrayed Holmes on-stage. Gillette needed a pipe he could keep in his mouth while he spoke his lines.

Stan's Shots

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Absolutely Useless Facts

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