Trivia...

Did you know that...

• The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.
• The Boston University Bridge (on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts) is the only place in the world where a boat can sail under a train driving under a car driving under an airplane.
• Emus cannot walk backwards.
• The United States government keeps its supply of silver at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY.
• There are only thirteen blimps in the world. Nine of the thirteen blimps are in the United States.
• Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.
• Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
• David Prowse was the guy in the Darth Vader suit in Star Wars. He spoke all of Vader's lines, and didn't know that he was going to be dubbed over by James Earl Jones until he saw the screening of the movie.
• Most Americans' car horns beep in the key of "F".
• "Mr. Mojo Risin" is an anagram for Jim Morrison.
• The word "modem" is a contraction of the words "modulate, demodulate." (MOdulateDEModulate)
• Many hamsters only blink one eye at a time.
• The name Jeep came from the abbreviation used in the army for the "General Purpose" vehicle, G.P.
• Since 1896, the beginning of the modern Olympics, only Greece and Australia have participated in every Games.
• Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33.
• February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.
• It takes a lobster approximately seven years to grow to be one pound.
• Montpelier, Vermont is the only U.S. state capital without a McDonalds.
• Giraffes have no vocal cords.
• The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.
• No word in the English language rhymes with month.
• The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
• There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.
• Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-decimal category.
• Roger Ebert is the only film critic to have ever won the Pulitzer prize.
• Columbia University is the second largest landowner in New York City, after the Catholic Church.
• An iguana can stay under water for 28 minutes.
• Back in the mid to late 80s, an IBM compatible computer wasn't considered a hundred percent compatible unless it could run Microsoft's Flight Simulator.
• The first Ford cars had Dodge engines.
• Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.
• It takes about a half a gallon of water to cook macaroni, and about a gallon to clean the pot.
• In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
• Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age.
• The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.
• Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
• 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.
• The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
• Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.
• No NFL team which plays it's home games in a domed stadium has ever won a Superbowl.
• The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It To Beaver".
• In the great fire of London in 1666 half of London was burnt down but only 6 people were injured
• Lincoln Logs were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright's son.
• One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today is because cotton growers in the 30s lobbied against hemp farmers---they saw it as competition.
• The only two days of the year in which there are no professional sports games (MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL) are the day before and the day after the Major League All-Star Game.
• Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
• The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan."
• Stewardesses and reverberated are the two longest words (12 letterseach) that can be typed using only the left hand. The longest word that can be typed using only the right hand is lollipop. Skepticisms is the longest word that alternates hands.
• A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.
• 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.
• A group of geese on the ground is a gaggle, a group of geese in the air is a skein.
• The underside of a horse's hoof is called a frog. The frog peels off several times a year with new growth.
• The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments
• The "save" icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutter on backwards.
• The combination "ough" can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."
• The verb "cleave" is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonymsof each other: adhere and separate.
• The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
• Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious, meaning "containing arsenic."
• The shape of plant collenchyma cells and the shape of the bubbles in beer foam are the same - they are orthotetrachidecahedrons.
• The word 'pound' is abbreviated 'lb.' after the constellation 'libra' British Pound Sterling comes from the same source: it is an 'L' for Libra/Lb. with a stroke through it to indicate abbreviation. Sames goes for the Italian lirawhich uses the same abbreviation ('lira' coming from 'libra'). So British currency (before it went metric) was always quoted as "pounds/shillings/pence", abbreviated "L/s/d" (libra/solidus/denarius).
• Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian coat of arms for that reason.
• Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.
• The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which means "the king is dead".
• Pinocchio is Italian for "pine head."
• Camel's milk does not curdle.
• In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.
• An animal epidemic is called an epizootic.
• Murphy's Oil Soap is the chemical most commonly used to clean elephants.
• The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used.
• There were no squirrels on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts until 1989.
• Blueberry Jelly Bellies were created especially for Ronald Reagan.
• All porcupines float in water.
• Hang On Sloopy is the official rock song of Ohio.
• Did you know that there are coffee flavored PEZ?
• The world's largest wine cask is in Heidelberg, Germany.
• Lorne Greene had one of his nipples bitten off by an alligator while he was host of "Lorne Greene's Wild Kingdom."
• Cat's urine glows under a blacklight.
• If you bring a raccoon's head to the Henniker, New Hampshire town hall, you are entitled to receive $.10 from the town.
• St. Stephen is the patron saint of bricklayers.
• The first song played on Armed Forces Radio during operation Desert Shield was "Rock the Casba" by the Clash.
• 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.
• Non-dairy creamer is flammable.
• The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the "American Pie." (Thus the name of the Don McLean song.)
• Texas is also the only state that is allowed to fly its state flag at the same height as the U.S. flag.
• The only nation who's name begins with an "A", but doesn't end in an "A" isAfghanistan.
• Pamela Anderson Lee is Canada's Centennial Baby, being the first baby born on the centennial anniversary of Canada's independence.
• The names of the three wise monkeys are: Mizaru: See no evil, Mikazaru: Hear no evil, and Mazaru: Speak no evil.
• The word for "dog" in the Australian aboriginal language Mbabaran happens to be "dog."
• 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.
• "Toki doki kuruma de kayotte imasu" means "Sometimes I commute by car." in Japanese.
• All elephants walk on tip-toe, because the back portion of their foot is made up of all fat and no bone.
• Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Spades - King David, Clubs - Alexander the Great, Hearts - Charlemange, and Diamonds - Julius Caesar.

Last modified: 11/26/1997