Professional Documents
Culture Documents
In Albania, nodding the head means no, and shaking the head means yes.
Rising sea levels from global warming could cause major flooding in Shanghai,
Guangzhou, and other Chinese coastal cities by 2050 leaving about 76 million
homeless.
The town of Tidikelt in the Sarah once went ten years with out rain.
It snowed more in the Grand Canyon that it did in Minneapolis in the past.
Public telephones in Israel are no longer operated by tokens. They now use
magnetic cards the size of credit cards.
The oldest exposed surface on the Earth is New Zealand’s south island.
Hong Kong has the world’s largest double-decker tram fleet in the world.
The driest place on the earth is a series of valleys near Ross Island in Antarctica
where no rain has fallen for the past 2 million years.
The first telephone book ever issued had 50 names. It was published in New
Haven, CT, by the New Haven District Telephone Co. in Feb, 1878.
Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
In the great fire of London in 1666 half of London was burnt down, but there was
only 6 injuries.
There are 1,792 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Only four countries in the world start with D, Denmark, Dominica, Djibouti,
Dominican Republic.
If Texas were a country, it’s GNP would be the 5th largest of any country.
The Angel Falls in Venezuela are nearly 20 times taller than Niagara Falls.
During winter in Moscow, the skating rinks cover more than 25,000 sq. meters of
land.
Brazil got its name from the nut, not the other way around.
Until the 18th century, India produced almost all the worlds diamonds.
The city of Istanbul straddles two separate continents, Asia and Europe.
The Forth Railway Bridge is a meter longer in summer than in winter due to
thermal expansion.
At the height of its power in 400 BC, Sparta had 50,000 slaves and 20,000
citizens.
Donald Duck comics were banned in Finland because he doesn’t wear pants.
The US consumes 25% of the world’s power.
Flying from London to New York by concord, due to time zones, you can arrive 2
hours before you leave.
Alaska is the state with the highest percent of people who walk to work.
San Francisco has the only mobile National Monument, the cable cars.
The national anthem of Greece has 58 verses, no one knows them all.
On a Canadian $2, the flag over the Parliament building is the US flag.
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 the books
that would occupy the building.
1 and 2 are the only numbers where they are values of the numbers of factors
they have.
If you need to remember PI, just count the number of letters in each work in the
following sentence. “May I have a large container of coffee?” If you are polite, say
“Thank You.” and get two more decimals. [3.141592653.....]
Every male over 18 is considered part of the Arizona malitia if they live in the
state.
A golden razor removed from King Tut’s tomb was still sharp enough to use.
All gondolas in Venice, Italy must be painted black, unless they belong to a high
official.
The 16th century astronomer Tycho Brahe lost his nose in a duel with one of his
students over a math computation. He wore a silver nose ever since.
Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of unwanted people with out killing them,
use to burn their house down. Hence the expression “To get fired.”
There are 2 credit cards for every person in the Untied States.
The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used.
At latitude 60 degrees south, you can sail all the way around the world.
The saguaro cactus, found in the southwestern United States doesn’t grow
branches until it is 75 years old.
Oak trees don’t have acorns until they are at least 50.
It is estimated that millions of trees in the world are from squirrels that forget
where they bury them.
Ernest Vincient Wright wrote a novel “Gadsby” with over 50,000 words--non with
the letter E.
Of all the words in the English language, the word set has the most definitions.
There are more than 50,000 earthquakes throughout the world every year.
Nose prints are used to identify dogs like humans use fingerprints.
Bulls are colorblind, therefore will usually charge at a matador’s waving cape no
matter what color it is.
Smelling bananas and/or green apples can help you lose weight.
A hard working adult sweats up to 4 gal. per day. Most evaporates before they
realize it though.
The poison-arrow frog has enough poison to kill about 2,200 people.
A lump of pure gold the size of a matchbox can be flattened into a sheet the size
of a tennis court.
After eating, a housefly regurgitates its food and then eats it again.
The White House was painted white to cover the scorch marks left when the
British army set fire to it in the war of 1812.
The word ‘haywire’ is not the legacy of an early and futile experiment in the
transmission in electricity.
Icelandic phone books are listed by given name rather than surname.
The population of Outer Mongolia have recently been issued with surnames.
There is no single word in the English language for the back of the knee.
The word set has the most definitions than every other word.
Japan is the only country every to have changed its capital to a city whose name
in an anagram of the previous capital (Tokyo and Kyoto).
If your eyes are 6’ above the surface of the ocean, the horizon will be about 3
statute miles away.
The longest work in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dict.
is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. The only other word with the
same amount of letters is its plural:
pneumonoultramicroscopiscilicovolcanoconioses.
Los Angeles full name is “El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles
de Porciuncula.”
The band Duran Druan got their name from an astronaut in the 1968 Jane Fonda
movie "Barbarella.”
Cleo and Cesar were the early stage names of Cher and Sonny Bono.
The company providing the liability insurance for the Republican National
Convention is San Diego is the same firm that insured the maiden voyage of the
RMS Titanic.
Dr. Samual A. Mudd was the physician who set the leg of Lincoln’s assassin John
Wilkes Booth... and whose shame created the expression for ignominy, “His
name is Mudd.”
The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin in WWII killed the only
elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
Wilma Flintstones’s maiden name was Wilma Slanghoopal, and Betty Rubble’s
maiden name was Betty Jean McBricker.
The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharaoh Ramses II who
fathered over 160 children.
If NASA send birds into space, they would soon die because they need gravity to
breath.
Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop
and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra’s “It’s A Wonderful Life.”
It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws
up its stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of its mouth. Then the frog
uses its forearms to dig out all the stomach’s contents then swallows it back
down.
Armored knights raised their visors to identify themselves when they rode past
kings. This became the modern military salute.
White Out was invented by the mother of Mike Nesmith (From the Monkees).
Sylvia Miles had the shortest performance ever nominated for an Oscar with
“Midnight Cowboy” Her entire role lasted only six minutes.
Charles Lindbergh took only 4 sandwiches with him on his famous transatlantic
flight.
Goth couldn’t stand the sound of barking dogs and could only write if he had an
apple rotting in the drawer of his desk.
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
from battle wounds; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died
of natural causes.
Gilligan of Gilligan’s Island had a first name that was only used once on the
never aired pilot. It was Willy. The skipper’s real name was Jonas Grumby. It was
mentioned once in the first episode on the radio’s newscast about the ship wreck.
In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.
Playing cards were issued to British pilots in WWII. If they were captured, they
could be soaked in water and unfolded to reveal a map for escape.
Ivory bar soap floating was a mistake. They had been overtaxing the soap
formula causing excess air bubbles that made it float. Customers wrote in and
told how much they loved that it floated, and it has floated ever since.
Studies show that if a cat falls off the seventh floor of a building, it has about
thirty percent less chance of surviving than a cat that falls off the twentieth floor. It
supposedly takes eight floors for the cat to realize what is occurring, relax, and
correct itself.
The saying “It’s so cold out there it could freeze the balls off a brass monkey”
came from when they had old cannons like the ones in the Civil War. The
cannonballs were stacked in a pyramid formation, called a brass monkey. When
it got cold outside, they would crack and break off... Thus the saying.
Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every 2 weeks so it doesn’t
digest it self.
The Sanskrit word for war means desire for more cows.
The phrase “rule of thumb” is derived from an old English law that stated that you
couldn’t beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
101 Dalmatians and Peter Pan and the only two Disney cartoon features with
both parents that are present and don’t die throughout the movie.
Stewardess is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.
The Baby Ruth candy bar was actually named after Grover Cleveland’s baby
daughter, Ruth.
Armadillos have four babies at a time and they are always the same sex.
Armadillos are the only animal besides humans that can get leprosy.
To escape the grip of a crocodile’s jaws, punch your thumbs into its eyeballs.
Reindeer like to eat bananas .
Ben and Jerry’s sends the waste from making ice cream to local pig farmers to
use as feed, pigs love the stuff except for Mint Oreo.
Physicist Murry Gell-Mann named the sub-atomic particles known as quarks for a
random line in James Joyce, “Three Quarks for Muster Mark”.
All fifty states have a city named Greenville although the spelling varies.
Pittsburgh, PA is the only city in the US with three sports teams that all wear the
same colors.
The letter “J” doesn’t appear anywhere on the periodic table of elements.
Months that begin with a Sunday will always have a Friday the 13th.
On the new 100 dollar bills, the time on the clock tower of Independence Hall is
4:10.
The shortest war in history was between Zanzibar and England in 1896. Zanzibar
surrendered in 38 minutes.
The condensed water vapor is the sky left behind by jets is called a contrail.
The US standard railroad guage (distance bewteen rails) is 4ft, 8.5 inches.
Most gemstones contain several elements. Except the diamond, it’s all carbon.
More people are killed by donkeys annually than are killed in plane crashes.
You were born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult, you only have
206.
If you go blind in one eye, you only lose about 1/5th of your vision but all your
sense of depth.
Oak trees do not produce acorns until they are fifty years of age or older.
People say that popping your bones will cause arthritis when you get older. It
only pops air pockets and does not cause arthritis.
Blond people have more hair than dark haired people do.
Six ounces orange juice contains the daily requirement for vitamin C.
American Airlines saved $40,000.00 in 1987 by removing 1 olive from each first
class salad.
One ragweed plant can release as many as one billion grains of pollen.
The term ‘hay fever’ originated in England, where some people suffered allergic
symptoms during hay pitching time. When the symptoms became sever, workers
often felt feverish.
The thumbnail grows the slowest, the middle nail grows the fastest.
When you sneeze, all your bodily functions stop, even your heart.
Our eyes never grow, our nose and ears never stop growing.
The 57 on Heinz ketchup bottles represents the number of varieties of pickles the
company once had.
If you lock your knee while standing long enough, you will pass out.
Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin.
The Volskswagen was originally called the “Strength Through Joy Wagon”
Just twenty seconds worth of fuel was left when Apollo 11 landed on the moon.
In the 40’s, the FCC assigned Ch. 1 to mobile services which is why there is no
channel 1 on the TV.
You can not swallow and breath at the same time thanks to the Epiglottis.
The book most stolen from libraries in the US is the bible, second is the Koran,
and third is the study guide for the police academy entrance exam.
Commercial aircraft tires are filled with nitrogen. There is moisture in normal air
which can form ice and unbalance the wheel assemblies.
The movie “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” was based on the book
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Ronald Dahl. The movie’s title was different
because during the seventies, “Charlie” was considered a racial slur.
Did you know that Lady Bugs are becoming extinct because of parasites that
feed on them.
Did you know that during summer time on the west coast of Norway, you can
have all four seasons in one day?
Jaw muscles are the strongest muscles in the body. Fifteen kilos per square
centimeter.
Over 1500 left handed people die per year using products for right handed
people.
You can go to Paradise and Hell in Michigan—both are towns in that state
Since female locusts eat their male partners after mating, it kind of makes you
wonder if their any gay locusts.
To have your picture taken by the first cameras, you would have to sit still for 8
hours .
If you toss a penny 10,000 times, it will not be heads 5,000 times, but more like
4,950. The heads picture is heavier, so it will land down more.
The human brain is so complex that it would cost over 8 billion for anyone to
program, and sell a computer to do all the things that it does.
If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months, and 6 days, you would have produced
enough energy to heat one cup of coffee.
The only contemporary words that end in –gry are angry and hungry.
The USA bought Alaska from Russia for 2 cents per acre.
Luke Skywalkers name was changed at the last minute from Starkiller in order to
make it less violent.
Most raindrops are round or doughnut shaped, not rain dropped shaped.
The worlds longest game of Monopoly lasted more then 660 hours.
The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to
squirt blood up to 30 feet.
If you fart consistently for 6 years, 9 months, you would pass enough gas to
make an Atomic bomb.
The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagra falls froze completely solid.
In 1977 there were 37 Elvis impersonators in the world. In 1993, there were
48,000. At this rate, by the year 2010, 1 out of every 3 people will be an
impersonator.
The average person swallows three spiders annually.