Did You Know

Did You Know …?
Compiled by Mart Schnd

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“Did You Know…?” provides you some fun and interesting facts of life. These were collected
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“Did You Know…?” provides you some fun and interesting facts of life. These were collected
from various sources. While attempts have been made to verify information in this
publication, neither the author nor the publisher assumes any responsibility for errors,
omissions, interpretation or usage of the subject matter herein. The contents in this
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Mart Schnd.
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
1. 20% of the population experiences snoring problems. Males and obese people
have more problems with snoring. Snoring tends to be louder when a person
sleeps on their back. There are more than 300 devices registered in the U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office to help cure snoring.
2. “60 Minutes” is the only TV program that has no theme song.

Source: Yahoo.com
3. A 1989 law in Florida forbids the release of more than ten lighter-than-air
balloons at a time. This is to protect marine creatures that often mistake balloons
for food and can suffer intestinal injuries if they eat the balloons.
4. A 1993 Florida law levies fines against anyone caught intentionally littering with
plastic fishing gear or lines.
5. A baby partridge is called a “cheeper.”

Source: UselessKnowledge.com
6. A baked ham has graced traditional Easter tables in America for centuries. The
tradition of ham served at Easter dates back to the 1600s. The colonists got the
idea from their Native American neighbors. Every year the Native Americans
welcomed spring with a planting festival that included the practice of smoking
meats, especially venison. The colonists were fascinated with the process and
decided to try it on the hogs they had raised. They salted, smoked, and stored the
meat through the winter until it was perfectly cured and ready for the table in the
spring, just in time for Easter.
7. A ball hitting the foul pole at Yankee Stadium in the 1930s was in play, not a
homer.
8. A ballet enthusiast is called a balletomane.
9. A bee could travel 4 million miles (6.5 million km) at 7 mph (11 km/h) on the
energy it would obtain from 1 gallon (3.785 liters) of nectar.
10. A bee has five eyes, two large compound eyes on both sides of its head, and three
ocelli (primitive eyes) on top of its head to detect light intensity.
11. A bride stands to the groom’s left at a wedding so that his sword hand would be
free. Apparently Anglo-Saxon brides were often kidnapped before a wedding and
brawls were common. That’s also why the best man stands with the groom; the
tribe’s best warrior was there to help the groom defend the bride.
12. A building in which silence is enforced, like a library or school room, is referred
to as a “silentium.”
13. A bumble bee flaps its wings 160 beats per second.
14. A charming wedding custom in early Yorkshire, England, involved a plate holding
wedding cake. It was thrown out of the window as the bride returned to her
parental home after the wedding. If the plate broke, she would enjoy a happy
future with her husband. If the plate remained intact, her future was bleak.
15. A cockroach’s heart is nothing but a simple tube with valves. The tube can pump
blood backwards and forwards in the insect. The heart can even stop moving,
apparently without harming the roach.
16. A colony of white-footed ants varies in size from 400,000 to over 1 million
individuals.
17. A common housefly is faster--in one sense--than a jet airplane. The fly moves 300
times its body length in one second, while the jet, at the speed of sound, travels
100 times its body length in one second.
18. A concert promoter in Hawaii sold a thousand tickets to a Spice Girls concert.
Unfortunately the concert was never scheduled. The man was arrested and told
police he needed the money for a nose job and a sex change.
19. A conveyor printing press is used to print the tiny white M’s on each M&M candy.
Because the peanut sizes vary, the press must be always adjusted to prevent
smashing the peanuts in peanut M&Ms. Regular M&Ms, all the same size, are
much easier to send through the printer.
20. A couple living together for two years in Russia is considered married. This is
called a citizen marriage.
21. A cricket an inch long has a chirp that is audible for nearly a mile.
22. A crocodile weighing 120 pounds exerts a force of about 1,540 pounds between its
jaws. A human being’s jaws exert a force of only 40 to 80 pounds.
23. A diet of dead pink flamingoes has changed the color of Kenyan baboons’ coats
from grey to reddish brown.
Source: ColorMatters.com
24. A dinner party consisting of 13 people in England during the Middle Ages was the
worst of omens. It foretold of the impending death of one in the group. This was
associated with the Last Supper, and also with a witches coven, as both had 13
members.
25. A “distich” is composed of two poetic lines matching both sound and sense. It is
used during the Chinese New Year to express the people’s wish for a peaceful and
happy new year.
26. A fantasia is a piece of music in which the composition follows the fancy, rather
than any conventional form, of an improvisational character.
27. A female peacock is called a “peahen.”

Source: St. Peters University
28. A few years back, a Chinese soap hit it big with consumers in Asia. It was claimed
in ads that users would lose weight with Seaweed Defat Scented Soap simply by
washing with it. The soap was sold in violation to the Japanese Pharmaceutical
Affairs Law and was banned. Reportedly, the craze for the soap was so great that
Japanese tourists from China and Hong Kong brought back large quantities. The
product was also in violation of customs regulations. In June and July 1999 alone,
more than 10,000 bars were seized.
29. A Firkin is a British measurement usually equal to a quarter barrel.

Source: Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary
30. A four month old fetus will startle and turn away if a bright light is flashed on it’s
mother’s belly. Babies in the womb will also react to sudden loud noises, even if
their mother’s ears are muffled.
31. A hummingbird weighs less than a penny.

Source: Encarta.com
32. A law in Illinois prohibits barbers from using their fingers to apply shaving cream
to a patron’s face.
33. A local ordinance in Atwoodville, Connecticut prohibits people from playing

Scrabble while waiting for a politician to speak.
34. A midden is a pile of trash left over from the kitchen or dinner table.
35. A quick slant pass was the play U.S. President Richard Nixon suggested Miami
Dolphins’ coach Don Shula use in Super Bowl VI. (The play resulted in an
incompletion; the Dolphins went on to lose the game to the Dallas Cowboys, 24-
3.)
Source: Nixon and Sports Chronology
36. A racehorse averages a weight loss of between 15 and 25 pounds during a race.
37. A rod is equal to 16-1/2 feet; 320 rods equal one mile.
Source: Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary
38. A shofar is a ram’s horn used in ancient times as a signaling trumpet, and is still
blown in synagogues on Rosh Hashana and at the end of Yom Kippur.
39. A spider web weighing only once ounce is so thin; it could reach from New York
to Paris.
40. A turkey should never be carved until it has been out of the oven at least 30
minutes. This permits the inner cooking to subside and the internal meat juices to
stop running. Once the meat sets, it’s easier to carve clean, neat slices.
41. A virtual underwater playground with its breathtaking coral, the Philippines
draws thousands of divers from Japan, China, and Taiwan each year.
42. A zarzuela is an operetta of a traditional type, with spoken dialogue and lyrical
music. The word is derived from the Spanish after La Zarzuela, the royal palace
near Madrid where the operetta was first performed in 1629. A zarzuela is also the
name of a seafood stew.
43. ABC-TV’s Monday Night Football premiered in September 1970. Its three original
commentators were Keith Jackson, Don Meredith, and Howard Cosell.
44. About one fifth of Australia is covered by its eleven deserts.
45. Abraham Lincoln was the first recognizable person whose likeness appeared on a
regularly issued US coin.
Source: Encarta.com
46. According to a 1999 survey conducted by the National Sleep Foundation, of those
people who snore, 19 percent snore so loudly that they can be heard through a
closed door.
47. According to a recent Gallup poll, 11 percent of the U.S. population believes in
ghosts and other supernatural entities.
48. According to a recent poll, people named the racecar as their favorite Monopoly
token. (Least favorite token is the wheelbarrow.)
Source: Monopoly.com
49. According to Beatles producer George Martin, Neal Hefti’s catchy composition of
the 1960s Batman Emmy-winning theme song inspired George Harrison to write
the hit song “Taxman.”
50. According to Greek myth, Athena sprang full-formed from the forehead of her
father, Zeus.
Source: Bullfinch’s Mythology
51. According to Margaret Jones, author of a Patsy Cline biography, there are a dozen
places in Virginia that could claim to be the hometown of the nomadic Cline. Her
family moved 19 times before she was 15.
52. According to several sources, country singer Tammy Wynette was born Wynette
Pugh.
53. According to sources, singer John Denver’s real name was Henry John
Deutschendorf, Jr.
54. According to the National Safety Council, coffee is not successful at sobering up a
drunken person, and in many cases it may actually increase the adverse effects of
alcohol.
Source: CoolQuiz.com
55. According to the rules of Gaelic football, players may punch the ball, but the
punching motion must be clearly visible to the referee. Players may not pick up
the ball off the ground unless they first get their toe under the ball.
56. Actor Jeremy Irons provides the voice of the narrator for Spaceship Earth at
Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida.
57. Actor Robert Mitchum served time on a Georgia chain gang as a teenager. He had
been arrested for vagrancy.
58. Actor Rudolph Valentino was often credited in his movies as Rudolph Valentine.
For his first credited film role in the 1917 “Alimony”, he was paid $5.00 per day
during shooting.
59. Actor Walter Matthau’s father was an Eastern Rite Catholic priest in Czarist
Russia.
60. Actress DIANE LANE struggled to keep a straight face while filming
UNFAITHFUL with RICHARD GERE - when rising air bubbles from her co-star’s
underwear disrupted a bath-tub love scene. The bubbling sound was reportedly so
loud they had to re-record some of their dialogue.
61. Actress Judy Garland was 16 yeas old when she filmed “The Wizard of Oz” in
1939.
62. Advertisements for coffee in London in 1657 claimed that the beverage was a cure
for scurvy, gout and other ills.
63. Aerosmith used to like to bring chainsaws with them on tour so they could hack
up hotel rooms easier. They also traveled with extra-long extension cords, so that
the televisions they tossed out windows would keep playing until they hit the
ground.
64. Aerosmith went berserk on their first Japanese tour. On opening night, they
destroyed the backstage area when they found turkey roll on the buffet table.
Lead singer Steven Tyler commented, - explicitly said “No turkey roll.”
65. Aerosmith’s “Dude Looks like a Lady,” was written about Vince Neil of Motley
Crue.
66. After a concert, Van Halen’s David Lee Roth would sit in the door of their tour
bus and have the road manager douse his feet in Perrier.
67. Albert Einstein was once offered the position of President of Israel. He declined
saying he did not have a head for human problems.
68. All English monarchs since William the Conqueror (1066) have been crowned in
Westminster Abbey.
Source: Encarta.com
69. Although the mistletoe is considered to be the seed of love, the common name of
the plant is derived from the ancient belief that mistletoe grew from bird
droppings. This strange belief was related to the ancient principle that life could
spring spontaneously from dung.
70. Although there are 30,000 species of edible plants, 90 percent of the world’s food
comes from just 20 of them.
Source: New York Daily News
71. Americans consume more than 353 million pounds of turkey during National
Turkey Lovers’ Month in June. By comparison, more than 675 million pounds of
turkey will be consumed at Thanksgiving.
72. Among other well-known names, a group of fish can also be called a draught.
73. Amphibians’ eyes come in a variety shapes and sizes. Some even have square- or
heart-shaped pupils.
74. Amphibians see no color; they perceive only black and white.
75. An average household in America will mail out 28 Christmas cards each year and
see 28 eight cards return in their place.
76. An elementary rule of mushroom collecting is never to place edible and poisonous
specimens together. The slightest touch may contaminate.
77. An estimated 10,000 million of the 100,000 million stars in our galaxy have died
and produced white dwarfs.
78. An old folk custom for selecting a husband from several suitors involved taking
onions and writing each suitor’s name individually on each. Then all the onions
were put in a cool dark storeroom. The first onion to grow sprouts would
determine which man the undecided maiden should marry.
79. An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.

Source: Bizzarro
80. Antarctica is 98% ice, 2% barren rock. The average thickness of the ice sheet is
7,200 feet; this amounts to 90% of all the ice and 70% of all the fresh water in the
world. If the ice cap were to melt, the sea level would rise by an average of 230
feet.
81. Ants can survive being “nuked” in a microwave? Microwave ovens have patterns
of standing waves, with hot, very high-density areas, and cold, very low-density
areas. Ants in the oven seek out the cold areas, and dodge the hot ones.
82. Anwar Sadat becomes first Arab leader to visit Israel on November 19th, 1977.
Source: Encyclopedia.com
83. Arguably the largest state in the world, Western Australia covers one-third of the
Australian continent. It spans over 2.5 million square kilometers (1 million
square miles).
84. Arthur Murray, of dancing instruction fame, was born Moses Teichman.
Source: Britannica.com
85. Artist Xavier Roberts first designed his soon-to-be-famous Cabbage Patch dolls in
1977 to help pay his way through school. They had soft faces and were made by
hand, as opposed to the hard-faced mass-market dolls, and were originally called
“Little People.”
86. As early as 1822, the postmaster in Washington, D.C. was worried by the amount
of extra mail at Christmas time. His preferred solution to the problem was to
limit by law the number of cards a person could send. Even though commercial
cards were not available at that time, people were already sending so many home-
made cards that sixteen extra postmen had to be hired in the city.
87. As recently as half a century ago, there was no clear understanding as to why the
sun shines. The discovery that it is due to nuclear-fusion reactions was not made
until the 1930s, by Hans Beth and Carl von Weizsacker.
88. As valedictorian for her high school, actress Jodie Foster delivered her graduation
speech in French.
89. As you might have suspected, the grave of Elvis Presley at Graceland in Memphis
is the most visited grave site in the world, with more than 700,000 visitors
annually.
Source: Guinness World Records 2000
90. At greatest risk of injury to a professional football player’s anatomy is the knee,
which is involved in 58 percent of all major football injuries.
91. At one time it was believed that citrus fruits could provide protection against
poisons.
92. At the 1952 Olympic Games, Russian gymnast Maria Gorokhovskaya won an
overall record seven medals.
93. At the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Tom Malchow was the youngest
member of the U.S. men’s swim team at age 19. Malchow was humorously
nicknamed “Puppy Chow” by his older teammates. Four years later, at the
Olympics in Sydney, he was the 200-meter butterfly gold medallist. Malchow’s
time of 1:55.35 was the third- fastest performance ever. His nickname changed to
“Top Dog” and “Big Dog.”
94. Attila the Hun died of a nosebleed on his wedding night in A.D. 453.
95. Australia is divided into two territories and six states.
96. Australia is the smallest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent in the World. It
is the only country which is also a whole continent -- 18.6 million people live
here.
97. Australia’s Ayers Rock is the largest rock in the world. It rises out of the middle of
the country with a diameter of 5½ miles around its base and a height of 1,000
feet.
98. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef stretches for 1,242 miles along the coast of
Queensland. It is a chain of small islands and more than 2,500 reefs.
99. Australian swimmer Murray Rose won six Olympic medals and was the first man
to swim the 1,500-metre freestyle in less than 18 minutes. He won national titles
in three countries: the United States, Canada, and Australia. At age 17 in 1956,
Rose became the youngest Olympian to win three gold medals during one
Olympics.
100. Australia’s city of Sydney began as a penal colony in 1788; for the next 60 years, it
received the criminal and persecuted people of British society.
101. Australia’s highest mountain is named for Thaddeus Kosciusko, the Polish
general who fought in the American Revolution.
102. “Baby-cut” carrots aren’t baby carrots. They’re actually full-sized ones peeled and
polished down to size. And there’s nothing small about their current popularity:
about 25 percent of California’s fresh carrot crop is turned into “babies.”
103. Bananas aren’t grown on trees. They’re part of the lily family, a cousin of the
orchid, nothing but a very yellow and plump member of the herb family. With
stalks 25 feet high, they’re the largest plant on earth without a woody stem.
104. Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.
Source: Bizzarro
105. Bangladesh is the most densely populated non-island region in the world, with
more than 1,970 humans per square mile.
106. Bart Simpson is allergic to two things: butterscotch and imitation butterscotch.
Source: The Simpsons
107. Because of a football’s resemblance to an olive, albeit a very large one, the
Chinese often call the American game of football “olive ball.”
108. Because of fears that the Japanese, who had attacked Pearl Harbor less than a
month earlier, might attach California, the Rose Bowl game of 1942 between
Oregon State and Duke University was moved east to Duke’s hometown in
Durham, North Carolina. It didn’t, however, help the home team. Oregon won,
20-16.
109. Because of the outbreak of major world wars, the modern Olympics did not hold
competitions in 1916, 1940, and 1944.
110. Because of their extreme elasticity, the lungs are 100 times easier to blow up than
a child’s toy balloon.
111. Beethoven’s music teachers pronounced him hopeless as a composer when he was
a child.
112. Beets reminded early cooks of a bleeding animal when they cut them open, so
they started calling them “beets.” This was derived from the French word bête,
meaning “beast.”
113. Before deciding to try a career in films and television, actor-director-producer

Michael Douglas earned a B.A. in pre-law from the University of California at
Santa Barbara.
114. Before going into the music business, Frank Zappa was a greeting-card designer.
115. Before settling on “Cornhuskers” in 1899, the University of Nebraska’s nicknames

were Treeplanters, Rattlesnake Boys, Antelopes, Old Gold Knights and the
Bugeaters.
Source: ESPN.com
116. Before Wally “Famous” Amos became a well-known cookie mogul in the 1970s
and 1980s, he worked for a time as a William Morris talent agent.
117. Bela Lugosi’s last movie role was a bit part in the Ed Wood “classic,” “Glen or
Glenda.”
Source: Quizland.com
118. Ben Franklin wanted the turkey, not the eagle, to be the U.S. national symbol. He
considered the eagle a “bird of bad moral character” because it lives “by sharping
and robbing.”
119. Bhutan is derived from the Indian word Bhotanta, meaning “the edge of Tibet.” It
is located in Asia near the southern fringes of the eastern Himalayas.
120. “Big cheese” and “big wheel” are medieval terms of envious respect for those who
could afford to buy whole wheels of cheese at a time, an expense few could enjoy.
Both these terms are often used sarcastically today.
121. Birds may travel great distances on their migrations. The Arctic Tern travels from
the top of the world - the Arctic, to the bottom - the Antarctic, round trip in a
single year - 25,000 miles in all!
122. Boastful Chicagolanders and not atmospheric conditions were the reason the
Chicago bears the sobriquet “The Windy City.”
Source: About.com
123. Bombyx mori, a silkworm moth, has been cultivated for so long that it can no
longer exist without human care. Because it has been domesticated, it has lost the
ability to fly.
124. Boston-native figure skater Tenley Albright was the first American woman to win
an Olympic figure-skating gold medal. In 1952, Albright placed second in
women’s figure skating at the Olympic Games. She was the U.S. national
championship from 1952 to 1956. In 1953, Albright became the first American
woman to win the world championship title. She won the title again in 1955. At
the 1956 Olympics, Albright won the gold medal in women’s figure skating. She
was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1988. After retiring, Albright
became a surgeon.
125. Box-office champ Toy Story (1995) is said to be filled with subtle inside jokes.
One is in the name of the evil boy who lives next door to Andy and the toys. Sid
Phillips, the wicked boy, was reportedly inspired by a former Pixar employee of
the same last name who was known to disassemble toys and use the parts to build
bizarre creations.
126. Brazil shares a common border with all South American countries, except
Ecuador and Chile.
127. Breakfast cereal traces its roots to ancient Greece, where people flavored cooked
grains with olive oil and lamb gravy.
Source: The Junk Food Companion
128. Buddy Holly’s 1957 smash hit “That’ll Be the Day” took its title from a line of
John Wayne’s dialogue in the western epic The Searchers.
Source: That Crazy, Kooky Internet Thing.
129. Bugs hold special places in the hearts of many Japanese, who often keep crickets,
beetles and fireflies as pets. Their calls are considered soothing and remind the
nature-loving Japanese of a simpler, less hectic age.
130. Bullet proof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers and laser printers were all
invented by women.
Source: Yahoo.com
131. Burger King® uses approximately 1/2 million pounds of bacon every month in its
restaurants.
132. Burt Reynolds, the Number 1 actor at the box office for five years in a row (1978
through 1982), relinquished his cinema crown to Clint Eastwood in 1983.
133. Butterflies taste with their feet.

Source: Bizzarro
134. By the end of the 1500s, women preferred to wear their purse pouches under their
skirts.
135. California Sea otters spend almost all of their time in the water. Alaska Sea otters
often sleep, groom, and nurse on land.
136. Camel hair brushes are actually made of squirrel hair.

137. Canada’s first Olympic gold medal was won by a man competing for the United
States. George Orton of Strathroy, Ontario, took first place in the steeplechase at
the 1900 Olympics in Paris, but because Canada didn’t have an official team, he
entered as part of the American team instead.
138. Candy canes began as straight white sticks of sugar candy used to decorate the
Christmas trees. A choirmaster at Cologne Cathedral decided have the ends bent
to depict a shepherd’s crook and he would pass them out to the children to keep
them quiet during the services. It wasn’t until about the 20th century that candy
canes acquired their red stripes.
139. Carolus Linnaeus, the Swedish genius who devised the naming system of living
things, was a fervent believer in sea monsters, citing numerous reports of
fishermen.
140. Carrie Donovan, former fashion editor who has written for “The New York
Times,” “Vogue,” and “Harper’s Bazaar,” was featured for the first time in April
1997 in Old Navy ads in “The New York Times.” She is the older blondish woman
with the big round glasses, known in the New York fashion industry, but
apparently not as well known elsewhere.
141. Carrots were first grown as a medicine not a food. The Ancient Greeks called
carrots “Karoto”.
142. Catherine de Medici was the first woman in Europe to use tobacco. She took it in
a mixture of snuff.
143. Catherine II of Russia kept her wigmaker in an iron cage in her bedroom for more
than three years.
144. Caviar, or fish eggs, contains the same healthful omega-3 fatty acids as salmon.
145. Celebrities who were school dropouts include Lucille Ball, Glen Campbell, Jim
Carrey, Cher, Carrie Fisher, Cary Grant, Billy Joel, Rod McKuen, Al Pacino, and
Peter Ustinov.
146. Celery has negative calories — it takes more calories to eat and digest a piece of
celery than the celery has in it initially.
147. Cellophane noodles must typically be soaked before using, as must dried porcini
mushrooms and most dried beans.
148. Centuries ago, men were told that the evil effects of coffee would make them
sterile; women were cautioned to avoid caffeine unless they wanted to be barren.
149. Ceylon became a republic in 1972 and changed its name to Sri Lanka.
150. Charlie Brown’s hero, Joe Schlabotnik, was fired as manager of the Waffletown
Syrups for calling a squeeze play with no one on base.
Source: QuantumStats.com
151. Childhood ice figure-skating partners JoJo Starbuck and Ken Shelley made
skating history when, in 1968, they were the youngest pairs team America had
ever sent to the Olympic Games.
152. Children have more sensitive ears than adults. They can hear a larger variety of
sounds.
153. China is home to 20 percent of the world’s population and consumes 30 percent
of the world’s cigarettes.
Source: The New York Times
154. China produces about 70 percent of the world’s silk supply.
155. Chocolate doesn’t cause acne. Experiments conducted at the University of

Pennsylvania and the U.S. Naval Academy found that consumption of chocolate -
even frequent daily dietary intake - had no effect on the incidence of acne.
Professional dermatologists no longer link acne with diet.
156. Christmas trees are edible. Many parts of pines, spruces and firs can be eaten:
The needles are a good source of Vitamin C; pine nuts and pine cones are also a
good source of nutrition.
Source: About.com
157. Coca Cola was originally colored green.

158. “Colonial goose” is the name Australians give to stuffed mutton.
159. Comedian JAY LENO’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is on the exact same
spot he once got arrested by police for vagrancy when he was a struggling comic.
160. Cook’s Illustrated conducted blind taste testings of vanillas, and the staff was
surprised to find that, in baked goods, expensive, aromatic vanillas performed
almost exactly the same as the cheaper brands of real vanilla. The differences
virtually disappeared during cooking.
161. “Court bouillon” is a broth made by cooking various vegetables and herbs,
traditionally used for poaching fish, seafood, or vegetables.
162. Cowboy singer Rex Allen narrated more than 80 Walt Disney films.
163. Cultured Christmas trees must be shaped as they grow to produce fuller foliage.
To slow the upward growth and to encourage branching, they are hand-clipped in
each spring. Trees grown in the wild have sparser branches, and are known in the
industry as “Charlie Brown” trees.
164. Cut-outs of a moon and a star were used in colonial times on outhouse doors to
designate the gender of the intended user. Originally, the moon cut-out was for
women and the star was for the men. But men’s outhouses were usually such a
mess that men preferred using the women’s outhouses. So, eventually the uses of
stars were phased out.
165. Death Valley in southern California is the lowest point in the United States at 282
feet below sea level. The highest point in the contiguous 48 states is also in
California: Mount Whitney, which is 14,491 feet above sea level.
166. Designer Gabrielle “Coco” Channel introduced her first perfume in 1921. She gave
it the name “Channel No. 5.” According to Channel, she jumped straight to
number five because it was her lucky number. To add luck to the fragrance, she
introduced it on the fifth day of May, the fifth month. Channel No. 5 became the
world’s best selling perfume.
167. Despite its current energy woes, California is second only to Rhode Island in
energy conservation.
Source: BarbraStreisand.com
168. Despite its great strength, the octopus tires easily. The oxygen-carrying
component of its blood, hemocyanin, is copper-based and is less efficient than the
iron-based hemoglobin of humans. Therefore, a struggling octopus will quickly go
into oxygen deprivation, and becomes lethargic.
169. Despite its hump, a camel has a straight spine.

170. Despite its reputation for being finicky, the average cat consumes about 127,750
calories a year, nearly 28 times its own weight in food and the same amount again
in liquids. In case you were wondering, cats cannot survive on a vegetarian diet.
171. Despite man’s fear and hatred of the wolf, it has not ever been proved that a non-
rabid wolf ever attacked a human.
172. Despite the fact that Tom Seaver, David Cone, Dwight Gooden, Jerry Koosman,
Mike Scott, and Nolan Ryan wore their uniform at one time or another, no New
York Mets pitcher has ever pitched a no-hit game.
173. Despite the strong presence of Latino baseball players since the 1940s, Armando
Rodriguez in 1974 and Rich Garcia in 1975, both in the American League, were
the first Hispanic umpires in the majors.
174. “Destroying angel,” one of several poisonous Amanita mushrooms that grow wild
in forests and fields, has an innocent appearance. It is, however, highly lethal.
Even a small bite of this beautiful white mushroom can cause, hours later, violent
stomach-ache, a breakdown of blood cells, and finally death.
175. Developed in Egypt about 5,000 years ago, the greyhound breed was known
before the ninth century in England, where it was bred by aristocrats to hunt such
small game as hares. Today, the dog is widely used in racing.
176. Diamond Head Crater is Hawaii’s most famous landmark. The United States Army
built a trail up the crater in 1908, and added bunkers during World War II. The
trail passes through an old gun emplacement.
177. Dinosaurs lived on Earth for around 165 million years before they became extinct.
178. Discovering two photographs of nude women among the film’s more than 110,000
frames, Disney Studios recalled 3.4 million copies of the kiddie home video
release of The Rescuers (1977), featuring the voices of Bob Newhart and Eva
Gabor.
179. Disney World in Florida was opened to the public in 1971. The amusement park
was the largest in the world, set within 28,000 acres. It required a $400-million
investment, and did not do well during the first year it was opened. Only 10,000
people visited Disney World during that initial year. With time, however, the
attendance numbers rose to more than 10,000 people an hour.
180. Disney World in Orlando, Florida, covers 30,500 acres (46 square miles) making
it twice the size of the island of Manhattan, New York.
181. Disney’s animated film Mulan did not do well in China. Many Chinese, especially
the elderly, complained that the title character looked too Western.
182. Disney’s Matterhorn was the first roller coaster to run on steel tubes, which made
the ride smoother while allowing Disney to build longer-lasting coasters faster
and cheaper.
183. Disney’s Mickey Mouse was featured on cereal boxes for the Post cereal Toasties
corn flakes back in 1935.
184. Disney’s Mulan was the first feature length production created by Walt Disney
Feature Animation, Florida, located at Disney/MGM Studios at Walt Disney
World.
185. Disorders in the brain can distort odors. Epileptics sometimes get auras of
strange odors just before a seizure.
186. Diversionary props such as the falcon in the “Maltese Falcon,” or the glowing
briefcase in “Pulp Fiction,” are known as “McGuffins.” The word was coined by
Alfred Hitchcock, a true master of the form.
Source: Ask Yahoo!
187. Dolphins have the best sense of hearing amongst all the animals. They are able to
hear 14 times better than humans.
188. Donald Duck comics were nearly banned years ago in Finland because he didn’t
wear pants.
189. Dr. King was a champion of the civil rights movement. He led people in the
struggle against racism, prejudice and segregation laws, trying to secure equal
treatment and respect for all. He was arrested 30 times for his activities. A huge
number --- 250,000 --- of fellow activists and others turned out in the march on
Washington, D.C. in 1963. It was at this rally that Dr. King presented his “I Have
a Dream” speech, hypothesizing on an ideal world where skin color would make
no difference in a person’s life.
190. Drosophila, the small fruit fly, has been warmly received by the scientific
community, mainly owing to the giant-sized chromosomes possessed by the cells
of its salivary glands. These chromosomes, which can stretch to more than a mile
long when unraveled, allow scientists to study DNA using only a sheet of white
paper and a bright table lamp.
191. During the 1966 telecast of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Ronald McDonald,
the fast-food chain’s new mascot, made his first-ever national television
appearance. A hot air balloon of Ronald appeared in the 1987 parade.
192. During the Christmas buying season, Visa cards alone are used an average of
5,340 times every minute in the United States.
193. During the football season of 1905, at least 19 players died in college and high
school contests.
194. During the mid-‘60s, Neil Young and Rick James (of “Superfreak” fame) played in
the same band, the Mynah Birds.
Source: AllMusic.com
195. During the middle Ages, almost all beef, pork, mutton, and chicken were chopped
fine. Forks were unknown at the time and the knife was a kitchen utensil rather
that a piece of tableware.
196. During the Renaissance when Charles VIII’s armies entered France, he also
brought with him his passion for perfume. Charles even had his own personal
perfumer. Rose, orange blossom and rosemary oil were favorite scents in his
court.
197. During World War I, the preferred lubricant for aircraft engines was castor oil.
Unfortunately, the engines also sprayed considerable quantities of the oil, a
common remedy for constipation, back into the cockpit, where the pilots would
ingest it and develop, uh “intestinal distress.”
Source: BajajUSA.com
198. During World War I, young Walt Disney made money with another young man
painting helmets with camouflage colors, banging them up to look battle-scarred,
and then selling them to Americans in search of realistic souvenirs.
199. Duroc is one American breed of hardy hogs having drooping ears – it was
allegedly named after the horse owned by the hog’s breeder.
200. Each year, 9 million tons of salt, more than 10 percent of all the salt produced in
the world, is applied to American highways for road de-icing. The cost of buying
and applying the salt adds up to $200 million.
201. Each year, people in the U.S. spend about four times as much on pet food as they
do on baby food.
202. Economic studies estimate that Project Apollo returned five to seven dollars to
the United States’ economy for every dollar invested in it.
Source: NASA
203. Edward VII had a highly respected reputation as a leader of fashion. As a result, it
was assumed he invented the world-famous Windsor knot after he abdicated in
1936 and became Duke of Windsor. According to Sarah Giddings, fashion trend
researcher, the tie knot may well have been the brainchild of his father; George V.
George was photographed in the 1920s wearing a tie knotted in what appeared to
be the never-before-seen Windsor knot.
204. Elizabeth Ann Seton was the first native-born American to be sainted. She was
born on August 28, 1774 in New York. She was sainted in the Holy Year of 1975.
205. Elvis Presley had two nicknames for his daughter, Lisa Marie Presley: “Yisa” and
“Buttonhead.”
206. Emerson Moser, who was Crayola’s senior crayon maker, revealed upon his
retirement that he was blue-green colorblind and couldn’t see all the colors. He
molded more than 1.4 billion crayons in his 37-year career.
207. Emily Dickinson wrote more than nine hundred poems, of which only four were
published during her lifetime.
208. Emmett Kelly’s classic tramp clown character “Weary Willie” provided comic
relief in the Circus through the end of 1956. When Kelly left his circus career, he
became the mascot for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
209. English anthropologist Francis Galton, a first cousin of Charles Darwin, first
worked out the use of fingerprints for identification purposes.
210. English critic and social theorist John Ruskin (1819-1900) made this astute
observation: “Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most
useless; peacocks and lilies, for instance.”
211. Europe and the Soviet Union grow 75 percent of the world crop of potatoes. In a
good year, the Russians, who call potatoes their “second bread,” account for one-
third of the world’s crop.
212. Evergreens, because of their long life span and their needles’ year-round exposure
to pollution, are the most vulnerable trees to air pollution.
213. Every day more money is printed by Parker Bros, Inc for their boardgame,
“Monopoly,” than by the US Treasury.
Source: UselessTrivia.com
214. Every plant in Tomorrowland at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, is edible.

Plants in this section of the amusement park include bananas, strawberries,
tomatoes, and more. Guests are more than welcome to pick their fill.
215. Finland has the greatest number of islands in the world -- 179,584
216. Flamingo tongues were a common delicacy at Roman feasts.

217. Food & Wine magazine reported that in Japan, squid is the most popular topping
for Domino’s pizza.
218. For its Olympic athletes who bring home gold, silver, or bronze medal, the
Philippines pays handsome sums of money. However, none have won in decades.
219. For the 2000 Super Bowl, about a third of the TV commercial spots were
purchased by dot-com companies. The following year, the numbers dropped to
just 10 percent bought by ‘Net companies.
220. For the Disney film Aladdin (1992), Robin Williams agreed to work for “scale,”
the Screen Actors Guild minimum of $485 per day, plus a painting by Pablo
Picasso.
221. For the first time, the play-by-play of Super Bowl XXX in 1996 was broadcast in
the Navajo language and NBC-TV offered a secondary, foreign-language audio
feed to its affiliates.
222. “Formication” is a hallucination that bugs or snakes are crawling on or under the
skin, and is common to amphetamine and cocaine users. This hallucination is also
referred to as “crank bugs.”
223. Forty percent of all people at a party snoop in their host’s medicine cabinet.
224. Forty-seven czars are buried within the Kremlin walls.
225. Four of the first six presidents of the U.S. were 57 years old when they were
inaugurated. No other presidents have been inaugurated at that age.
226. Fred and Wilma Flintstone were the first couple to be shown in bed together on
prime time television.
227. “Frosted Flakes” spokesfeline Tony the Tiger has a son, Tony Jr. and a daughter,
Antoinette.
Source: Kelloggs.com
228. George Washington’s presidential salary was $25,000/annum.

Source: IPL/POTUS
229. Giant crab spiders have such a ferocious appearance they earned a spot as extras
in the horror film Arachnophobia. The creatures, however, eat cockroaches,
crickets, and caterpillars, more than compensating for their scary appearance.
230. GM donated 300 cars for use in the production of the movie, The Matrix
Reloaded. All 300 were wrecked by the end.
231. Green Bay, Wisconsin proudly proclaims itself “The Toilet Paper Capital of The
World.”
232. Groundhog Day comes from the Christian holiday, Candlemas, only the animal in
whose shadow was monitored was a hedgehog.
Source: Encarta.com
233. “Grunt” and “slump” are two names that refer to a fruit dessert with a biscuit
topping.
234. H.R. Haldeman and Ron Ziegler, who helped plan the Watergate burglary for
President Nixon, both worked at Disneyland when they were younger.
235. Hail destroys hundreds of millions dollars’ worth of crops and property each year,
a greater toll than that taken by tornadoes.
236. Half of all Americans live within 50 miles of their birthplace.

Source: Yahoo Message Board
237. “Hang on Sloopy” is the official rock song of the state of Ohio.
238. Hans Christian Andersen’s 1835 Wonder Stories was banned from children’s
reading lists in Illinois in 1954. The book was stamped “For Adult Readers” to
make it “impossible for children to obtain smut.”
239. “Happy Birthday” was the first song to be performed in outer space, sung by the
Apollo IX astronauts on March 8, 1969.
240. Harrison Ford is listed as one of 50 people barred from entering Tibet --
apparently, Disney Studios clashed with Chinese officials over the film Kundun
(1997). Ford’s wife, at the time, Melissa Mathison wrote the screenplay.
241. Heinrich W. Brandes made the first weather map in 1815, based on data gathered
in 1783. Brandes waited so long because it was the only way he could be certain
the information was correct.
242. Heinz, the company that proudly boasts of “57 Varieties,” actually sells more than
5,700 varieties of items in more than 200 nations. That number reflects the size
of the company’s product line in 1896.
Source: Heinz.com
243. Helen Keller (1880-1968), blind and deaf from an early age, developed her sense
of smell so finely that she could identify friends by their personal odors.
244. Helen of Troy was queen of Sparta.
245. Henri Nestle - The Name’s Familiar
246. Henry Cavendish, one of the great scientists of the 1700s, was painfully shy and
could barely speak to one person – never to two. He was so timid in the presence
of women that he communicated with his female servants by notes only. If one
crossed his path in his house, she was fired on the spot. He built a separate
entrance to the house so that he could come and go without meeting anyone. In
the end, he insisted on dying alone.
247. Henry Ford is credited with inventing the charcoal briquet.
248. Henry Ford was obsessed with soybeans. He once wore a suit and tie made from
soy-based material, served a 16-course meal made entirely from soybeans, and
ordered many Ford auto parts to be made from soy-derived plastic.
249. Hershey’s Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like
it’s kissing the conveyor belt.
250. Historians claim that the first valentine was a poem sent in 1415 by Charles, Duke
of Orleans, to his wife. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London at the time. In
the United States, Miss Esther Howland is given credit for sending the first
Valentine’s Day cards. Commercial valentines were introduced in the 1800s and
now the date is much commercialized. The town of Loveland, Colorado, does a
large post office business around February 14.
251. Hockey great, Wayne Gretzky, receives two tickets to every event at Madison
Square Garden as part of his final player contract with the New York Rangers.
252. Hollywood actress Joan Crawford had her back teeth removed to make her
cheekbones more prominent.
253. “Honolulu” means “sheltered harbor.”
254. Hostess Cupcakes and Twinkies are Interstate Brands Corp.’s two most popular
snack items. Every year, the Americans gobble half a billion of each.
255. Hugh Hefner put together the first issue of Playboy Magazine while moonlighting
from his job with “Children’s Activities” magazine.
Source: The People’s Almanac #3.
256. Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.
Source: Bizzarro
257. Humans are unable to taste or smell something that is not soluble. On a dry
tongue, sugar has no taste. In a dry nose, the smell of flowers is not noticeable.
258. Ichigensan okotowari is a custom developed in ryotei (restaurants which serve

authentic traditional Japanese cuisine) in Kyoto. It means that you must be
introduced by someone to be welcomed. The reason for this is it enables the
restaurant to give its warmest hospitality and services to all its customers.
Business cards are preferred to credit cards. Most establishments will only accept
cash.
259. Identical twins are not really identical. They have different finger prints, they are
actually mirrored copies!
260. If a man with normal color vision marries a color-blind woman, their sons will be
color-blind and the daughters will have normal vision. Colorblindness is a sex-
linked trait transmitted by females, but is also recessive in females.
261. If a person “passes wind” consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is
produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb.
Source: Bizzarro
262. If an object has no molecules, the concept of temperature is meaningless. That’s

why it’s technically incorrect to speak of the “cold of outer space” - space has no
temperature, and is known as a “temperature sink,” meaning it drains heat out of
things.
263. If you are classified as a POSSLQ by the Census Bureau, you are a “Person of
Opposite Sex, Sharing Living Quarters.”
264. If you are traveling at 55 mph, your car will go 56 feet before you can shift your
foot from the accelerator to the bake.
265. If you lace your shoes from the inside to the outside the fit will be snugger around
your big toe.
266. If you stacked one million $1 dollar bills, the pile of money would weigh 2,040.8
pounds. If you used $100 dollar bills, the stack would weigh only 20.4 pounds.
267. If you were to rub garlic on the heel of your foot, it would be absorbed by the
pores and eventually show up on your breath.
268. If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough
sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.
Source: Bizzarro
269. In 1765, the sandwich was invented by John Montagu, the fourth Earl of
Sandwich, who gave the food its name. The Earl used to order roast beef between
pieces of toast for a snack while he was at the gaming tables, it allowed him to
keep one hand free to play while he ate.
270. In 1871, Albert Jones of New York City received a patent on “an improvement in
paper for packing,” or, corrugated paper.
271. In 1889, Aunt Jemima pancake flour, invented at St. Joseph, Missouri, was the
first self-rising flour for pancakes and the first ready-mix food ever to be
introduced commercially.
272. In 1893, Milwaukee’s Pabst beer won a blue ribbon at the Chicago Fair, and was
sold thereafter as Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.
273. In 1896, only first- and second-place finishers of the Olympics were awarded
medals. The winners received silver medals and crowns of olive branches, while
second-place finishers received bronze medals.
274. In 1912 in Stockholm, the first electric timing devices and public address system
was used at the Olympics.
275. In 1918, Walt Disney was 16 and too young for the military. When he heard that
the Red Cross Ambulance Corps would accept 17-year-olds, he lied about his age,
joined, and began training. He nearly missed his chance when he came down with
influenza during the epidemic that killed 20 million people worldwide. The war
ended. But the Ambulance Corps still needed 50 more men, and Walt was the
fiftieth selected. For the next year, Walt drove an ambulance, chauffeured
officers, played poker, started smoking, and wrote letters.
276. In 1918, Welch’s developed its first jam product called “Grapelade.” The initial
quantity of Grapelade was purchased in its entirety by the U.S. Army. It was an
immediate hit in the military lower ranks, and became a demanded product by
doughboys when they returned to civilian life.
277. In 1928, William Dreyer and Joseph Edy opened a small ice cream factory at 3315
Grand Avenue in Oakland, California. “Grand” has been part of the Dreyer’s
Grand Ice Cream company name ever since: as a memento of the company’s
birthplace on Grand Avenue and a declaration of the magnificence of their ice
cream.
278. In 1937 in the Battle of the Fly it was zipper versus button. French fashion
designers went wild for the new invention for men’s trousers.
279. In 1938, a comic strip was used to advertise Pepsi-cola. It was titled “Pepsi and
Pete.”
280. In 1938, Walt Disney received a special honor for his film, Snow White and the
Seven Dwarves. Disney was given an Oscar and seven miniature statuettes to
commend his film.
281. In 1940, Walt Disney’s Fantasia was the first film in history to use stereophonic
sound. Ever the perfectionist, Disney personally paid for equipping the New York
and Los Angeles Cathay theaters with stereo speakers for his pet film’s world
premiere. Unfortunately, the film bombed at the box office.
282. In 1948, it was common to see carhops serving those who wanted to order food
from their car. Harry Snyder of Baldwin Park, California had the idea of a drive-
thru hamburger stand where customers could order through a two-way speaker
box. Harry opened California’s first drive-thru hamburger stand, named “In-N-
Out Burger”. Today In-N-Out remains privately owned and has 148 stores in 3
states.
283. In 1954, Trix breakfast cereal was introduced by General Mills. The new cereal, a
huge hit with kids, was 46.6 percent sugar.
284. In 1963, Kellogg’s launched a new cereal, Froot Loops, and introduced cereal
character Toucan Sam. The colorful toucan talked in Pig Latin (called
“Toucanese”) and wore a towering hat of fruit. While Sam still graces boxes of
Froot Loops, he’s gone through many changes since his debut, including dropping
the Pig Latin and hat.
285. In 1965, a collection of eight bottles of Chateau Lafite Rothschild was sold at
auction of $2,200.
286. In 1976, the first eight Jelly Belly® flavors were launched: Orange, Green Apple,
Root Beer, Very Cherry, Lemon, Cream Soda, Grape, and Licorice.
287. In 1984, Britons ate 41 pounds of beef per person per year, according to the Meat
& Livestock Commission. By 1994, the figure dropped to 35 pounds. In March
1996, “Mad Cow Disease” in Britain lowered the consumption figure even more,
although many Britons continued to eat roast beef despite the food scare.
288. In 1986, Rob Angel, a 24-year-old waiter from Seattle, Washington, developed
Pictionary, a game in which partners try to guess phrases based on each other’s
drawings.
289. In 1990, the children’s classic “My Friend Flicka” was pulled from the optional
reading lists for 5th- and 6th- graders in Clay County, Florida, because the book
reportedly used objectionable language.
290. In 1994, the Tokens charged back into the spotlight with their song “The Lion
Sleeps Tonight,” more than 30 years after it initially became a hit. Based on a
Zulu folk song, the bouncy tune was Number 1 on the pop charts for three weeks
in October 1961. It turned up again in 1972, recorded by Robert John. It was
featured in Disney’s box office hit The Lion King, and although the song wasn’t on
Lion King’s soundtrack record, RCA re-released the single in response to renewed
interest by the public.
291. In 1996, Chicken Alfredo was introduced as one of the new flavors of Gerber Baby
Food.
292. In 2000, the National Chicken Council reported that the average American
consumes 81 pounds of chicken a year.
293. In 4000 B.C., Egyptians discovered yeast’s leavening abilities and turned out
more than 40 types of bread.
294. In 648 B.C., horses were first introduced into sports with the entrance of riders in
the Olympic Games. By the sixth century B.C., horse-racing had become a popular
sport.
295. In a 1999 National School Lunch Program survey, nearly 70 percent of American
grade-school students surveyed said they liked pizza was their favorite entrée,
corn their favorite vegetable, and cookies their favorite dessert.
296. In a single production shift, 30 miles of string is used on the Barnum’s packages,
which run into 8,000 miles of string per year. As many as 25,000 cartons and
500,000 animals are produced per hour in the Nabisco bakeries.
297. In all of history, the most destructive disease is malaria. More than 1.5 million
people die from malaria every year.
298. In all of history, the most destructive disease is malaria. More than 1.5 million
people die from malaria every year.
299. In an amazing coincidence, the Sun and Moon appear to be the same size in the
Earth’s sky.
Source: Encarta.com
300. In ancient Rome, gold salves were used for the treatment of skin ulcers. Today,
gold leaf plays an important role in the treatment of chronic ulcers.
301. In ancient times, people observed that mistletoe appeared on a branch or twig
where birds had left droppings. “Mistel” is the Anglo-Saxon word for “dung,” and
“tan” is the word for “twig”. So, mistletoe actually means “dung-on-a-twig”. What
a strange meaning for a plant that is supposed to bring love and happiness!
302. In Australia’s metropolitan Melbourne, about 26 percent of the land is reserved

for parks.
303. In Australian slang, to be “spliced” means to be married.

304. In Bavaria, beer is not an alcoholic drink. It is legally defined as a staple food.
Source: FunTrivia.com
305. In British English, a booger is called a “bogey” or “bogie.”
306. In Calama, a town in the Atacama Desert of Chile, it has never rained.
307. In Canada, CHEZ FM fooled the listeners one April Fools Day making listeners
believe that it was the last day that the treasury would honor all the two-dollar
bills still in circulation. The same year they had people going through their
change looking for the mysterious two-dollar coins that had mistakenly been
minted from real gold.
308. In Cape Town, South Africa is the largest rugby museum in the world, which
houses a valuable collection of rugby nostalgia and equipment dating back to
1891.
309. In dentistry, a “mulberry molar” is a tooth with more than the usual four cusps.
310. In early America, simple wooden beds and straw mattresses were the rule in all
but the wealthiest of homes. American inns during the Revolutionary War era
were not lush or comfortable, and an innkeeper would think nothing of requesting
that a guest share his bed with a stranger when accommodations became scarce.
311. In England, vraic is a seaweed used for fuel and fertilizer. It is found in the
Channel Islands.
312. In English folklore, Queen Mab was a fairy queen who governed people’s dreams.
313. In Fairbanks, AK, it is considered an offense to feed alcoholic beverages to a

moose.
Source: DumbLaws.com
314. In fourteenth-century England, the number of males named Robert, William,

Henry, John, or Richard averaged 2 out of every 3.
315. In France, April Fools day is called “Poisson d’Avril” meaning April Fish. The
tradition is that French children will tape paper fish to the backs of their friends.
When they would discover the fish on their back, the prankster would yell
“Poisson d’Avril!” The origin of this is unknown.
316. In Hollywood’s early movie-making days, even the stars supplied their own
wardrobe for contemporary films. Period clothes were supplied from stock, or by
the Western Costume Company, established in 1912. This remained the practice
for most male actors and for all extras. Anyone with a dress suit could earn extra
money and higher status in films of the 1920s.
317. In living memory, it was not until February 18, 1979 that snow fell on the Sahara.
A half-hour storm in southern Algeria stopped traffic. But within a few hours, all
the snow had melted.
318. In Los Angeles, discarded garments are being recycled as industrial rags and
carpet underlay. Such recycling keeps clothing out of landfills, where it makes up
4 percent of the trash dumped each year.
319. In many countries, it is the custom to wish friends a “Happy Birthday” on January
1st, rather than a “Happy New Year.” This day is nicknamed “Everyman’s
Birthday,” and is considered the day when everyone becomes a year older,
whether it’s their actual day of birth or not. Similarly, this practice is observed in
horse racing. No matter when a race horse is born, they all “become” a year older
on New Year’s Day, although there are no records explaining how or why this
came to be.
320. In March 2000, the Disney Company reversed its 43-year ban on mustaches for
its theme-park employees. A memo sent to the 12,000 Disneyland and Walt
Disney World employees said guests would be comfortable with “neatly trimmed
mustaches.” Founding father Walt Disney sported his own mustache, but that
didn’t stop him in 1957 from banning facial hair. He did this to distance his crew
from stereotypical county-fair “carnies.” The grooming code at the theme parks
still bans beards, goatees, piercings, and unnatural hair colors.
321. In Maryland, it is illegal to sell condoms from vending machines with one
exception: places where alcoholic beverages are sold for consumption on the
premises.
Source: Bizzarro
322. In medieval Europe, alchemists mixed powdered gold into drinks to “comfort sore
limbs,” one of the earliest references to arthritis.
323. In North America more bananas are eaten every day than any other fruit.
324. In parts of Greece and Italy, people say “no” by tossing their heads back and
clucking their tongues.
325. In Puerto Rico, wiggling one’s nose means roughly “What’s going on?”
326. In Russia, imported American hot dogs are big favorites. They are eaten at lunch,
dinner, and even breakfast. Wienies are often sliced lengthwise, fried in butter
and dished up with bread, cheese, and smoked fish. In 1996, Russian imports of
American cured-meat products totaled nearly $76 million.
327. In Scandinavia, mistletoe was considered a plant of peace, under which enemies
could declare a truce or warring spouses kiss and make-up. Whenever enemies
met under the mistletoe in the forest, they had to lay down their arms and
observe a truce until the next day.
328. In Scotland the April fool is called April “gowk” which is Scottish for cuckoo. The
Cuckoo is an emblem of simpletons.
329. In Siberia, it can get so cold that the moisture in a person’s breath freezes instead
of forming vapor. It can actually be heard when it falls to earth as ice crystals.
330. In Sweden, it is a breech of etiquette for you to toast your host or anyone who is
your senior in rank or age until after they toast you.
331. In Thailand and India, couples overwhelmingly responded in a survey that if they
could choose the gender of their unborn child, they would prefer a boy.
332. In the 100 years since its inception, there have been 19 years where there has
been NO recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. During World War I and II, there was
one recipient: The International Red Cross Committee, which won in 1917 and
1944.
Source: Nobel.se
333. In the 1930s a sales campaign ran for children’s clothing that used the new
zippers. The device was praised for promoting self-reliance in young children.
“Mommy look! One zip and I’m all dressed!”
334. In the 1960s, women burned their bras as a way of protesting the Vietnam War.
335. In the 1980s, the media revealed that North Pole explorers Robert Perry and
Matthew Henson had fathered children by Eskimo women during their years in
the Arctic in the early 1900s.
336. In the 1990s, in response to a quiz conducted at the National Science Foundation,
only 48 percent of Americans answered the following true/false question
correctly: “The earliest human beings lived at the same time as the dinosaurs.”
The correct answer, as you know doubt knew, is “false.” This quiz was used to
determine how many American adults know about basic science.
337. In the Middle Ages, one Valentine’s Day custom was for young men and women to
draw names from a bowl to see who their valentines would be. They would then
wear these names on their sleeves for one week. - To wear your heart on your
sleeve - now means that it is easy for other people to know how you are feeling.
338. In the opening procession of the Olympics, the team representing the host nation
always marches last.
339. In the scrolling final credits of Disney’s Fantasia, the sorcerer’s name is listed as
“Yensid” – Disney spelt backwards.
340. In the southern part of Japan, it rarely snows to any great amount except for the
mountains, but the northern part usually has plenty of snow in the winter.
Autumn is by far the best time to visit Japan, as far as the weather goes.
341. In the U.S., federal law states that children’s TV shows may contain only 10
minutes of advertising per hour and on weekends the limit is 10 and one-half
minutes.
342. In the United States over 1 billion valentine cards are sent each year. Valentine’s
Day is celebrated in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom,
France and Australia. Parents get 1 out of every 5 valentines. Women buy 85% of
all valentines.
343. In the United States, 64 percent of men do not make plans in advance for a
romantic Valentine’s Day with their sweethearts.
344. In Tokyo, a bicycle is faster than a car for most trips of less than 50 minutes.
345. In trucking circles, a “bumper sticker” is a tailgater who is following another

vehicle too closely.
346. Incan soldiers invented the process of freeze-drying food. The process was
primitive but effective -- potatoes would be left outside to freeze overnight, then
thawed and stomped on to remove excess water.
347. Increasing herbicide use has created a jungle of at least 48 “super-weeds” that are
resistant to chemicals.
348. Insectivores are animals that eat insects. They include shrews, moles and
hedgehogs.
349. Invertebrates are animals that don’t have a backbone. Most animals are
invertebrates, 98 of every 100 animal species falls into this category.
350. Iranian women competed in the Olympics for the first time at the 1996 Atlanta
Games. The women were limited in the events in which they were allowed to
participate, so they would not violate their country’s restrictive laws regarding
women’s clothing.
351. Israel is one-quarter the size of the state of Maine.
352. It can take a deep-sea clam up to 100 years to reach 0.3 inches (8 millimeters) in
length. The clam is among the slowest growing, yet longest living species on the
planet.
353. It costs more to buy a new car today in the United States than it cost Christopher
Columbus to finance three voyages to and from the New World.
354. It is a common misconception that Mel Gibson is actually Australian. He was

born in New York. His family moved to Australia, where he eventually began his
film career, when he was 12. The belief persists, especially in the Great Britain,
that he’s Australian. For the film that made Gibson an international star, Mad
Max, his voice was dubbed by another actor for the original American release.
355. It is estimated that a single toad may catch and eat as many as 10,000 insects in
the course of a summer.
356. It is estimated that manatees live a maximum of 50 to 60 years.
357. It is the female lion who does more than 90 percent of the hunting, while the
male is afraid to risk his life, or simply prefers to rest.
358. It takes approximately 69,000 venom extractions from the coral snake to fill a 1-
pint container.
359. It was believed in earlier times that if a young woman saw a robin flying overhead
on Valentine’s Day, it meant she would marry a sailor. If she saw a sparrow, she
would marry a poor man and be very happy. If she saw a goldfinch, she would
marry a millionaire.
360. Ivory Soap gets its name from a passage in the 45th Psalm that reads, “All thy
garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of ivory palaces, whereby they
have made thee glad.”
361. Izzy, the Olympic Games mascot in 1996, was almost universally regarded by
marketing experts as a dud. The blue Olympic mascot, with its bulging eyes and
dangling feet, was a poor seller for many licensed goods makers.
362. Jack Broughton was one of the most revered boxing figures in England. He was
buried at Westminster Abbey, the burial place of British nobility, although
Broughton was not a member of English royalty.
363. Jack Mercer was the longest-serving vocal actor in a cartoon, providing the
“voisk” of Popeye the Sailor for 45 years.
364. Jackrabbits are powerful jumpers. A twenty inch adult can leap twenty feet in a
single bound.
365. Jaguar images and costumes were outlawed by the Catholic Church in the
seventeenth century because of their association with Indian religion, militia, and
politics.
366. James Brendan Connolly of the United States won the first medal of the 1896
Olympic Games in the triple jump.
367. Japanese bowing carries different meanings at different angles. A bow at an angle
of five degrees means “Good day” (simple greeting). A bow at an angle of fifteen
degrees is also a common salutation, a bit more formal it means “Good morning.”
A bow at an angle of thirty degrees is a respectful bow to indicate appreciation for
a kind gesture. A bow at a forty-five-degree angle is used to convey deep respect
or an apology.
368. Japanese rules for the proper use of chopsticks are many. Improper use includes
wandering the chopsticks over several foods without decision, and is called
mayoibashi. The unforgivable act of licking the ends of chopsticks is called
neburibashi. Lack of chopstick etiquette is strictly taboo.
369. Jelly Belly created their blueberry flavor jellybean for US president Ronald
Reagan.
370. JENNIFER LOPEZ’s wax figure at New York’s MADAME TUSSAUD’S has a
special interactive feature which sets it apart from the rest - it blushes whenever
patrons whisper in its ear.
371. Joe Namath is the only QB to throw for 4,000 yards in a 14-game season.
Source: AllExperts.com
372. John Adams was the first president to live in the White House - then called the
Executive Mansion.
373. John Carpenter’s 1978 movie “Halloween” was shot in 21 days in the spring of
that year. Made on a budget of $300,000, it eventually would gross nearly $50
million. Because there was no budget for wardrobe, the film’s star, Jamie Lee
Curtis, went to J.C. Penney for her character’s outfits. She spent less than a
hundred dollars for the entire set.
374. John Wilkes Booth first planned only to kidnap Abraham Lincoln, holding the
president hostage until all Confederate prisoners of war were released.
Source: Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Civil War
375. JP Morgan, the American billionaire, bought the White Star Line in 1902, for his
International Mercantile Marine Corp of New Jersey. The company took ten years
to build the Titanic. Therefore, even though she had a British crew, Titanic was
technically an American ship. Morgan was supposed to be on the ship for its first
and only voyage, but had to cancel at the last minute. He even had his own suite
built on the boat, a suite that went unused.
376. Juan Metzger, a former Dannon Co. executive, is credited with putting fruit in
yogurt. Metzger was recognized for suggesting the addition of fruit at the bottom
of containers of the dairy product to improve its taste. The first flavor was
strawberry. Metzger’s father, Joe, co-founded Dannon Co. in the Bronx in 1942.
377. Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and Dostoyevsky were all epileptics.
378. Just 50 years after Johannes Gutenberg invented his printing press in the mid-
15th century; more than 6 million books had been published on law, science,
poetry, politics, and religion.
379. Just preceding his death, King Henry VIII was suffering from painful and
festering, reeking leg ulcers that had to be dressed several times a day. Historians
speculate that he was syphilitic. From the condition of chronic dropsy, now called
edema, Henry’s legs were enormous and he weighed more than 400 pounds.
380. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the fathers of communism, wrote 500 articles for
the “New York Tribune” from 1851 to 1862.
381. Karl Marx was targeted for assassination when he met with two Prussian officers
in his house in Cologne in 1848. Marx had friends among the German labor
unions, and he was considered a threat to the autocrats. Dressed in his bathrobe,
he forced the officers out at the point of a revolver, which, it turned out, was not
loaded.
382. King James VI and the Privy Council issued an edict in 1603 banning the use of
the surname MacGregor.
383. Korea marched under a single flag at the 27th Olympiad at Sydney, Australia, the
first time in Olympic history, to a jubilant standing ovation. Despite such a
display of unity, the two countries were technically still at war; in fact, North
Korea had boycotted the Games when Seoul, South Korea, hosted the summer
games in 1988.
384. Laptop computers and briefcases falling from the overhead bins onto passengers’
heads may be the most common accident aboard an airplane.
385. Leonardo da Vinci invented the scissors.

Source: TriviaWorld.com
386. Liquid water was found inside a 4.5-billion-year-old meteorite in 1999, giving
scientists their first look at extraterrestrial water.
387. M & M’s candy stands for the initials of the inventors (Mars & Murrie).
388. Male and female sea turtles are about the same size.
389. Marie Curie is the only two-time recipient of the Nobel Prize, once in physics
(1903), and again in chemistry (1911).
Source: Encyclopedia Britannica
390. Mega-rich singer JENNIFER LOPEZ has struck lucky with a bet on the American
Super Bowl. BEN AFFLECK’s fiancee placed an impressive $247,000 bet on the
TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS to win the big championship match - and they did.
391. Men can read smaller print than women but women can hear & smell better.
392. MGM’s splashy valentine to its own film musicals, That’s Entertainment
premiered at the Beverly Theater in Beverly Hills in May 1974. Stars attending the
gala opening included Elizabeth Taylor, Fred Astaire, Ava Gardner, Gene Kelly,
Bing Crosby, Jimmy Durante, Groucho Marx, Liza and Vincente Minnelli, and
Johnny Weissmuller. A lavish 4,000-foot-long, 6-foot-wide red carpet ran down
from the theater across the street and down Wilshire Blvd. to the Beverly Wilshire
Hotel, reminiscent of Hollywood’s golden years.
393. Michael Jackson starred in Captain Eo, a short, 3-D space adventure-musical that
began showing at Disneyland and Disney World in 1986 and ran for about ten
years.
394. Mohandas Gandhi’s middle name was Karamchand.

Source: Encarta.com
395. Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a Friday the 13th.
Source: A calendar
396. Montpelier, VT is the least populated state capital in the U.S.

397. More children are conceived in December than in any other month.
Source: Readers Digest
398. More than 1,130,000 packages of Jell-O gelatin are purchased or eaten every day.
399. More than 50 billion aspirin tablets are consumed worldwide each year.
Source: Bayer Corp.
400. More than 60 percent of all recipients of organ donations are between the ages of
18 and 49.
401. More than 63 million Star Trek books, in more than 15 languages, are in print; 13
were sold every minute in the United States in 1995.
402. Most healthy adults can go without eating anything for a month or longer. But
they must drink at least two quarts of water a day.
403. Most llamas instinctively make good guard animals for livestock.
404. Mother’s Day Symbolism: The pink carnation is a gesture to honor a living
mother, while a white carnation is worn to symbolize remembrance.
405. Mystery writer Agatha Christie’s full name was Agatha May Clarissa Miller
Christie Mallowan. She was born on September 14, 1890, in Devon England.
406. Napoleon Bonaparte loved white horses so much, he owned at least fifty.
407. Napoleon Bonaparte was always depicted with his hand inside his jacket because
he suffered from “chronic nervous itching” and often scratched his stomach sores
until they bled.
408. Napoleon favored mathematicians and physical scientists, but excluded

humanists from his circle, believing them to be troublemakers.
409. Napoleon had conquered Italy by the time he was 26 years old.
410. Napoleon suffered from ailurophobia, the fear of cats.
411. Napoleon took 14,000 French decrees and simplified them into a unified set of
seven laws. This was the first time in modern history that a nation’s laws applied
equally to all citizens. Napoleon’s seven laws are so impressive that by 1960, more
than 70 governments had patterned their own laws after them or used them
verbatim.
412. New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s annual salary is $0.
Source: NY Daily News
413. New York law states that it is illegal to shoot a rabbit from a moving trolley car.
414. New Yorkers spend the most time each day commuting to work, an average of 38
minutes each way.
Source: MSNBC
415. Ninety percent of all species that have become extinct have been birds.
416. No one can say just when Walt Disney began thinking about undertaking his
biggest project to date, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but by the summer of
1934, his ideas were beginning to take concrete form. An exploratory outline that
he distributed to his animation staff, dated August 9, 1934, included the following
discussion of the dwarfs’ names: “The names which follow each suggest a type of
character and the names will immediately identify the character in the minds of
the audience.” Some of the names that were considered, then discarded, included
Scrappy, Doleful, Crabby, Wistful, Dumpy, Soulful, Tearful, Snappy, Helpful,
Gaspy, Gloomy, Busy, Dirty, Awful, Dizzy, Shifty, and Biggy-Wiggy.
417. No serpents are found in present-day Ireland.

Source: Encarta.com
418. “No Strings Attached,” the pop album released by the band “N Sync in March
2000, sold a whopping 2.41 million copies its first week, breaking a record many
in the industry believed would stand for years. Less than a year earlier in May
1999, the former record had been set by the Backstreet Boys” “Millennium,” when
1.13 million copies were sold in the initial week of release.
419. North America got its first taste of the tropical fruit in 1876 at the Philadelphia
Centennial Exhibition. Each banana was wrapped in foil and sold for 10 cents.
420. Norwegians spend the most per capita on books -- the equivalent of $130/annum.
Source: DidYouKnow.com
421. Nutella is a hazelnut spread made with skim milk and cocoa. It is virtually
unknown in America, but European children have happily smeared it on breakfast
croissants for decades.
422. Nyctitropism is the tendency of the leaves or petals of certain plants to assume a
different position at night.
423. October is “National Cookie Month.”

424. Of about 350 million cans of chicken noodle soup of all commercial brands sold
annually in the United States, 60 percent is purchased during the cold and flu
season. January is the top-selling month of the year.
425. Of all cheese customs, one of the more unusual was that of the “groaning cheese.”
Years ago in Europe, a prospective father would nibble on a huge chunk of cheese
while awaiting the home birth of his child. Instead of pacing outside the bedroom
door, the father would eat from the center of the cheese until a large hole had
been gnawed out. Later, his newborn infant was ceremoniously passed through
the hole.
426. Of all the major brewing nations, England remains the only one in which ale is
the primary beer consumed. This is in contrast to lager, which is the world’s
overall dominant beer style.
427. Of all the potatoes grown in the United States, only 8 percent are used to make
potato chips. Special varieties referred to as “chipping potatoes” are grown for
this purpose.
428. Official FDA guidelines allow whole pepper to be sold with up to 1 percent of the
volume made up of rodent droppings.
429. Often a child’s first solid food, one of every 11 boxes of cereal sold in the United
States is Cheerios.
430. Okonomiyaki is considered to be Japan’s answer to pizza. It consists of a

potpourri of grilled vegetables, noodles, and meat or seafood, placed between two
pancake-like layers of fried batter.
431. Olive oil is made only from green olives. Nearly the entire production of green
olives grown in Italy is converted into olive oil.
432. On 1 April 1957 on BBC’s show Panorama opened with a line about Spring coming
early this year, prompting the spaghetti harvest in Switzerland to be early as well.
In the normal news manner, spaghetti’s oddly uniform length was explained as
the result of years of dedicated cultivation. The report stated that the ravenous
spaghetti weevil had been conquered.
433. On December 15, 1854, Philadelphia began using the first street-cleaning
machine.
434. On food, writer Barbara Costikyan notes, “In the childhood memories of every
good cook, there’s a large kitchen, a warm stove, a simmering pot, and a mom.”
435. On September 15, 1830, British MP William Huskisson attended the grand
opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Visitors boarded the
Northumbrian, which had stopped to take on water. Against instructions, the
passengers disembarked to hobnob. Seeing the Duke of Wellington, Huskisson
walked across the adjacent line to speak to him just as another train came
barreling down the line. Huskisson stumbled and fell beneath the wheels of the
oncoming train. He became the world’s first railroad passenger fatality.
436. On the average, each American consumes 117 pounds of potatoes, 116 pounds of
beef, 100 pounds of fresh vegetable, 80 pounds of fresh fruit, and 286 eggs per
year.
437. On the average, there are eight peas in a pod.
438. On the Italian Riviera in Viareggio, there is a culinary tradition that a good soup
must always contain one stone from the sea. This stems from the days when an
Italian fisherman’s catch was scooped up in nets; fish and stones frequently
ended up together in the same cooking pot.
439. On the TV show “The Jetsons,” Elroy Jetson attended “the Little Dipper School.”
Source: PowerUp.com.au
440. On the TV show “The Simpsons,” Marge Simpson’s bowling ball is named
“Homer.”
Source: QuizSite.com
441. Once an orange is squeezed or cut, the vitamin C dissipates quickly. After only 8
hours at room temperature or a scant 24 hours in the refrigerator, there is a 20
percent vitamin C loss.
442. One belief of ancient times was that on St. Valentine’s Day and Eve, a young girl
would eventually marry the first eligible male she met on this day. If a girl was
curious and brave enough, she could conjure up the appearance of her future
spouse by going to a graveyard on St. Valentine’s Eve at midnight. She would then
have to sing a prescribed chant and run around the church twelve times.
443. One bushel of corn will sweeten more than 400 cans of soda. A single bushel of
corn can produce: 32 pounds of cornstarch, 1.6 pounds of corn oil, 11.4 pounds of
21 percent protein gluten feed, or 3 pounds of 60 percent gluten meal.
444. One charming St. Valentine’s Day tradition from long ago was to pick a dandelion
that had gone to seed. The person would then take a deep breath and blow the
seeds into the wind. He or she would count the seeds that remained on the stem.
That was supposedly the number of children they would have.
445. One has to eat 11 pounds of potatoes to put on 1 pound of weight - a potato has no
more calories than an apple.
446. One hundred cups of coffee over four hours contain enough caffeine to kill an
average human.
Source: Encarta.com
447. One in eight workers in Boston walks to the office - the highest rate in the nation.
Source: MSNBC
448. One in five American teenagers believes that the US declared its independence
from… France!
449. One newscaster on the news show CBO Morning announced that the clock in
Ottawa’s Peace Tower was being switched to digital.
450. One of the fattiest fishes is salmon: 4 ounces of the delectable fish contain 9
grams of fat.
451. One single perfect red rose framed with baby’s breath is referred to by some
florists as a “signature rose,” and is the preferred choice for many for giving on
Valentine’s Day, anniversary, or birthday.
452. “One thousand” is the lowest number containing the letter “a” in its spelling.
Source: Yahoo.com
453. Only 38% of all energy used by Americans is generated from domestic oil.
Source: Business Week
454. Oppossums do NOT sleep upside-down hanging by their tails.

Source: Ever Wonder Why?
455. Originally a palace, the Louvre was made into a museum after the French
Revolution.
456. Panama hats actually originated in Ecuador.

Source: Shushan’s Hats
457. Pashka is a Russian Easter cake decorated with molded reliefs depicting the
Passion. It traditionally has candied fruits that form the initials X and B (for
Khristos voskress, meaning “Christ is Risen”) in the Cyrillic alphabet.
458. Pedigree beagles were originally bred to have a white tip on their tails, the better
to be seen (and be distinguished from game) by hunters in the wild.
459. Pennsylvania has the largest rural population in the United States.
460. People began to weave fabric during the Neolithic Era; domesticated cotton first
came into widespread use in ancient India around 3000 BC.
Source: Encarta.com
461. Per 1999 medical data, an alarming 2 million people are hospitalized and as many
as 140,000 die each year from side effects or reactions to prescription drugs.
462. Phobos, one of the moons of Mars, is so close to its parent planet that it could not
be seen by an observer standing at either of Mars poles. Phobos makes three
complete orbits around Mars every day.
463. Pine, spruce, or other evergreen wood should never be used for barbequing. These
woods, when burning or smoking, can add harmful tar and resins to the food.
Only hardwoods should be used for smoking and grilling, such as oak, pecan,
hickory, maple, cherry, alder, apple, or mesquite, depending on the type of meat
being cooked.
464. Pitcher plants are passive hunters that capture insects by means of nectar and
color. Once lured inside, the insect slips on the plant’s slippery inner surface and
drowns in the rain water that has collected in its base. The pitcher plant secretes
enzymes that digest the bodies, except for outer skeletons and wings, of its prey.
465. Pittsburgh is the only city where all major sports teams have the same colors:
black and gold.
466. “Please Mr. Postman” has been a Number 1 hit on Billboard’s record charts twice:
the chart-topping versions were recorded by The Marvelettes in 1961 and The
Carpenters in 1974.
467. Pleonexia is a clinical term for morbid greediness.
468. “Poached egg” means “egg-in-a-bag,” from the French word poche. When an egg
is poached, the white of the egg forms a pocket around the yolk; hence, the name.
469. Point Pinos is the oldest continuously operating lighthouse on the west coast of
the United States. Its beacon has flashed nightly as a guide and warning off the
rocky coast of California since 1855.
470. Poland was the dominant power in Eastern Europe from the fourteenth to the
seventeenth century.
471. Political satire was part of the “Punch and Judy” puppet shows of the seventeenth
century in England. Additionally, a satirical British magazine called Punch was
launched in 1841. It was named for the mischievous title character of the puppet
show. For the most part, puppetry was not an entertainment vehicle for children
until recent years; puppetry has been a political metaphor for centuries.
472. Pooch Passion: According to a pet owner survey, 79 percent of Americans give
their dogs holiday and/or birthday presents.
473. Pope Alexander III declared Henry II to be the rightful sovereign of Ireland in
1172. It took seven and a half centuries for the Irish to regain their freedom.
474. Porcupines float in water!

Source: FunnyFuel.com
475. Potatoes were banned in Burgundy in 1910 because it was said, “frequent use
caused leprosy.”
476. Potentially toxic mercury necklaces, popular among south Texas youths, were
collected in 1996 under a state program following the death of a 5-year-old girl
who was exposed to mercury vapors when her necklace broke as she played in a
sandbox. Attached to a cord, the mercury-filled glass vials sold for about $2.
Mercury can affect the brain, nervous system vision, hearing and memory, and
long exposure is deadly.
477. President Benjamin Harrison and the first lady never touched the light switches
themselves when electric lights were installed during the renovation of the White
House in 1891. Fearing shock, they would call for a servant whenever they wanted
the lights on or off.
478. President James Buchanan was a gracious host. When the Prince of Wales visited
the White House in the fall of 1860, so many guests accompanied him, there
weren’t enough beds. The story goes that the president decided to sleep in the
hallway.
479. President James Garfield could write Latin with one hand and Greek with the
other – simultaneously.
480. President Nixon was the first U.S. President to attend a regular season National
Football League game while in office.
Source: The Nixon and Sports Website
481. President William Howard Taft was a seventh cousin twice removed of Richard M.
Nixon, and was a distant relative of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
482. President William McKinley always wore a red carnation in his lapel for good
luck.
483. President William McKinley had a pet parrot that he named “Washington Post.”
484. President Woodrow Wilson’s given name was Thomas. He was known to all as
“Tommy” until he was 24-years-old.
Source: The People’s Almanac 3
485. “Q” is the only letter in the alphabet that does not appear in the name of any state
of the United States.
486. Queen Elizabeth II has a silver hood ornament of St. George (the patron saint of
England) slaying the dragon placed on any car in which she is traveling.
487. Ray Kroc, the man who made McDonalds a world-wide fast food colossus started
out by selling paper cups and then milk shake mixers, before discovering the
hamburger restaurants that would make him famous.
Source: Time.com
488. Redhaven, fairhaven, elberta, desert gold, and sunhaven are varieties of peaches.
489. Rhode Island, the smallest state, also has the smallest state motto: Hope.
Source: Mini Page
490. Richard Cadbury invented the first Valentine’s Day candy box in the late 1800s.
491. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil was, for a time (1808), declared the capital of Portugal by
King Joao VI, who fled his country while it was occupied by Napoleon I’s forces.
Source: Is Greenland Really Green?
492. Robert E. Lee’s dying words were “Strike the Tent.”

493. Rock Elm generates the greatest heat among common firewoods.
Source: Yahoo.com/Woodheat.org
494. Ronald Reagan was originally cast in the immortal role of “Rick” in the movie
“Casablanca.”
Source: People’s Almanac #3
495. Rosemary Clooney’s signature song, “Come On-A-My-House,” was written by

Ross Bagdassarian, who, under the nom de chante Dave Seville, also gave life
(and voices) to Alvin and the Chipmunks. Bagdassarian shared the writing credit
with his cousin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer William Saroyan.
Source: Hey, I just know this stuff
496. ROV stands for remotely operated vehicle, and it dives in deep water to videotape
or collect deep sea animals or other scientific data. An ROV doesn’t carry people.
It is operated from a research ship at the ocean’s surface.
497. Rubies and sapphires are made of corundum -- the hardest known rock after the
diamond.
498. Rulership by words is called logocracy.
499. Samuel F. B. Morse set about perfecting the telegraph as a money making scheme
to augment his meager income earned from portraiture.
Source: About.com
500. Saturday mail delivery in Canada was eliminated by Canada Post on February 1,
1969.
501. Scarlett O’ Hara, Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind” lead character, was
originally given the name Pansy.
502. Science has been able to design a robot that allows people to tickle themselves. To
use the machine you would have to lie on your back with your eyes closed. The
robot, located near you, would have a piece of soft foam attached to a plastic rod
which you would control by joystick. You would maneuver the remote control and
after a short delay, would respond. This takes advantage of the delay in the
cerebellum.
503. Scientists believe that hydrogen comprises approximately 90 to 99 percent of all

matter in the universe.
504. Scientists have determined that most rocks on the surface of the Moon are
between 3 and 4.6 billion years old.
505. Scientists have found chocolate has a chemical that helps counteract depression.
506. Scooby-Doo’s “real” name is Scoobert. The name itself was inspired by Frank
Sinatra’s scat refrain, (“doobie-doobie-doooo”) from his rendition of “Strangers
in the Night.”
Source: ABC Sports Online/Britannica.com
507. Second only to Christmas, Valentine’s Day brings out the card-giver in people,
with an average of 1.01 billion cards purchased every year.
508. Secure, relatively high-yielding stocks came to be called blue chips, a term taken
from the game of poker, where blue chips are more valuable than white or red
chips.
509. Selenologists study the Moon, as geologists study Earth.
510. Senectitude is another word for old age.
511. Set in 175 acres of woodland in Yorkshire Dales, Britain’s Lightwater Valley
Theme Park has the longest roller coaster in the world, The Ultimate, as affirmed
by the Guinness Book of World Records 2000.
512. Shelta is an esoteric jargon based on Irish and Gaelic, and it is still spoken by
tinkers and vagrants in some parts of Ireland and England.
513. “Sherbet” is Australian slang for beer.
514. Should there be a crash; Prince Charles and Prince William never travel on the
same airplane as a precaution.
515. Since 1874 the mints of the United States have been making currency for foreign
governments, whose combined orders have at times exceeded the volume of
domestic requirements.
516. Since Neptune’s discovery in 1846, it has made about three-quarters of one
revolution of the Sun.
517. Sliced bread, the greatest thing SINCE MailBits Trivia, was invented in 1928 by
Otto Friedrich Rodwedder.
Source: Business 2.0
518. Slime molds are half fungus and half bacteria. They live on the floor of South
American rainforests and slither around like an animal in search of food while,
like a plant, they scatter spores that will become more slime molds.
519. Sneezing with your eyes open will NOT cause them to pop out.
Source: Encarta.com
520. So many women copied Veronica Lake’s trademark “peekaboo” hairstyle during
World War II that the U.S. government had to ask the movie star to pull her long
blonde tresses back from over her right eye, in order to cut down on accidents in
factories.
Source: Slate.com
521. Soap was considered a frivolous luxury of the British aristocracy from the early
1700s until 1862, and there was a tax on those who used it in England.
522. Some lions mate over 50 times a day.

Source: Bizzarro
523. Some microbes cause diseases, but most are harmless and many are actually
helpful. For example, some microbes help clean up oil spills.
524. Some Persian rugs may last as long as 500 years before wearing out.
525. Some scientists predict that the new Euro currency, minted from an alloy high in
nickel, a powerful allergen that causes skin complaints in a third of all young
women, will give millions of people eczema and dermatitis.
Source: Times of London
526. Some toothpaste and makeup contain crushed volcanic stone.
527. Some world maps as recently as the mid 18th century listed California as an
island.
528. South Australia’s city of Adelaide is unusual in that it was settled by free people.
The city has no convict history.
529. Specializing in showing only newsreels, the Embassy Theatre opened in New York
City in November 1929. It proved to be popular for a time, and was the first
theater of its kind.
530. St Valentine’s Day on February 14th dates back to a Roman festival of youth,
Lupercalia, when young people chose their sweethearts by lottery.
531. St. Swithin’s Day, July 15: During the 900s, a man named Swithin (spelling also
recorded as “Swithun”) was the Bishop of Winchester in England. Some years
after his death, and for reasons not documented, Bishop Swithin’s remains were
transferred to Winchester Cathedral on July 15, 971. That same day, there was a
tremendous rainstorm. Legend has it that Bishop Swithin was so angry about the
move from his final resting place that he caused the storm. According to old
English folklore, if it should now rain on July 15th, St. Swithin will make it rain
for 40 days thereafter.
532. Strangeray Springs cattle station in South Australia is the largest ranch in the
world. Its area measures 30,029 square kilometers – only slightly smaller than
the European country of Belgium.
533. Stuart (or Stewart) is the most famous “occupational” name in Scotland, and was
the name of a line of kings and queens which lasted almost 350 years.
534. Sunflower seeds in a bird feeder will attract the greatest variety of wild birds.
535. Sydney is the largest city in Australia. It contains 4 million people.
536. Tapping the top of an agitated beverage can with a key, spoon, or other metal
object actually DOES reduce your chance of being sprayed.
537. Teddy Roosevelt found his favorite dog, Skip, wandering around the Grand
Canyon. While Roosevelt had many dogs, Skip was the only one permitted to
sleep in the presidential bed.
538. Teenagers often have episodes of anger and negativity in which they slam doors
and scream tirades. According to experts, most puberty-driven “snit fits” last an
average of 15 minutes.
539. Television broadcasts were suspended until the end of World War II in 1945. This
delayed the development of an affordable television system until the late 1940s.
540. Television’s “I Love Lucy” began as a radio show “My Favorite Husband,” in
which Lucy played the scheming, middle-class wife of a bank vice president. CBS
wanted to move the show to television - but almost scrapped the idea because of
Lucy’s insistence that Desi Arnaz play her husband. Lucy got her way, and the rest
is television history.
541. Ten books on a shelf can be arranged in 3,628,800 different ways.
542. Ten percent of frequent fliers say they never check their luggage when flying.
543. Termites eat wood twice as fast when listening to heavy metal music.
544. Texas Rangers shortstop Alex Rodriguez, at $22 million, makes more money than
any other baseball player -- and the entire Tampa Bay Devil Rays, too.
545. Texas state commissioner of agriculture Jim Hightower, in a speech to the Dallas
Chamber of Commerce in March 1986, and which was printed in the New York
Times, declared the following: “The only difference between a pigeon and the
American farmer today is that a pigeon can still make a deposit on a John Deere.”
546. That “I am” is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
547. That it costs a total of $6,400 to raise a medium-size dog to the age of eleven.
548. That Regis Philbin, a spry 69 years young, became the oldest man to appear as a
pinup in “16” magazine.
549. That the phrase “rule of thumb” is derived from an old English law which stated
that you couldn’t beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
Source: Triviaonline
550. That, due to continental drifts. The Atlantic Ocean is now 120 ft wider than it was
at the time of Columbus’s first voyage.
551. The 1961 movie, “The Misfits” with Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable, was the last
movie for both screen legends.
Source: About.com
552. The 1988 blockbuster movie Titanic lasts 3 hours and 14 minutes. The actual ship
took 2 hours and 40 minutes to sink after hitting an iceberg.
553. The 1991 “Truth or Dare” documentary about Madonna’s 1990 international
concert tour was shown in Australia and New Zealand under the title of “In Bed
with Madonna.
554. The ability to firmly grip with your hand comes from the muscles in the forearm.
The muscles pull on tendons in the hand, bending the fingers.
555. The actor/director Robert Redford was the first male to appear alone on the cover
of “Ladies Home Journal.”
556. The actress Amy Irving provided the singing voice of Jessica Rabbit in the film,
“Who Framed Roger Rabbit.”
557. The actress Morgan Fairchild’s birth name Patsy McClenny.

558. The African boabab tree can have a circumference as large as 100 feet. One such
tree in Zimbabwe is so wide that the hollowed-out trunk serves as a shelter at a
bus stop, with a capacity to hold as many as 40 people.
559. The age at which muscles are most powerful is between 20 and 25.
560. The American crow weighs approximately one pound when fully grown.
561. The animal responsible for the most human deaths worldwide is the mosquito.
562. The ant can lift 50 times its own weight, can pull 30 times its own weight and
always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.
Source: Bizzarro
563. The ant has the largest brain in the animal kingdom, in proportion to its size.
564. There are more different kinds of insects on existence today than the total of all
kinds of other animals put together.
565. The Asian grasshopper can jump up to 15 feet, a distance the length of 18 of their
10-inch bodies.
566. The Asiatic cordial kumiss is made from fermented cow’s milk.
567. The athletes from Iceland took 25 hours in the air to arrive in Sydney, Australia,
for the 27th Olympic Games in September 2000.
568. The Australian slang term “zot” means to knock out or kill quickly, as in “Zot that
fly.”
569. The average airspeed of the common housefly is 4.5 miles per hour. A housefly
beats its wings about 20,000 times per minute.
570. The average bee can travel up to 11 miles per hour.
571. The average child will eat 1,500 PB sandwiches by high school graduation.
572. The average house fly lives only two weeks.
573. The average human needs 18,250 gallons of water to keep going in an 80- year
lifetime. That’s enough to fill 2-1/2 tanker trucks!
Source: Food Rules
574. The average life expectancy of a queen bee is 6 years, a worker bee, 6 months, and
a drone, just 8 weeks.
575. The average person sees more than 20,000 TV commercials in a year.
Source: About.com
576. The average person’s nose makes nearly a cupful of mucus (aka “snot”) every day.
Most remains in the nose, which it moistens and protects.
577. The average spider can travel up to 1.17 miles per hour.
578. The Aztec ruler Montezuma II consumed upwards to fifty cups of chocolate daily
in the belief that the substance possessed aphrodisiacal qualities.
579. “The bends” is a painful condition caused when nitrogen gas forms bubbles in a
diver’s blood. Scuba divers get the bends if they come up too fast from a deep
dive.
580. The Bible, the world’s best selling book, is also the world’s most shoplifted book.
581. The biggest butterfly in the world is the Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing. It lives in
Papua New Guinea, and has a wingspan greater than 11 inches (28 centimeters).
582. The biggest dragonflies are South American giant damselflies. Their wingspan is
up to 7 inches (19 centimeters) and their bodies are 5 inches (12 centimeters)
long.
583. The birth name of Freddy Mercury, the late lead singer of Queen, was Farookh
Bulsara.
Source: An xs4all.nl member’s page
584. The bite of a brown recluse spider can result in a wound so severe that it may
require two months to heal.
585. The “Black Death” of the 14th century killed one in three persons in Europe.
Source: The Ultimate Trivia Quiz
586. The blood of a honeybee never clots.
587. The boat name most often registered by owners is “Obsession.”

Source: Yahoo.com
588. The boxer Jersey Joe Walcott’s real name is Arnold Raymond Cream.
Source: MindFun.com
589. The brain is surrounded by a membrane laced with nerves that transmit
sensations to the organ. However, the brain itself has no feeling; if it is cut into,
the person feels no pain.
590. The cakewalk, a dance popular among fashionable classes at the turn of the 20th
century was originally a slaves’ parody of awkward white ballroom dances.
Source: History.com
591. The camel’s hump(s) are used as fat storage. Thus, an undernourished camel will
not have a hump.
592. The candy bar “Snickers” was named after a horse.

593. The cap-and-gown uniform associated with school graduations dates to the 12th
and 13th centuries.
594. The celebration of Valentine’s Day started in the time of the Roman Empire.
595. The chickens in the United States lay enough eggs to circle the globe a hundred
times.
596. The Chocolate Manufacturers Association of America says that 36 million boxes
of chocolate are sold for Valentine’s Day. According to Hershey’s Chocolate
Company, Valentine’s Day ranks fourth in sales behind Halloween, Christmas,
and Easter.
597. The Christmas carol, “Good King Wenceslas,” got its title not due to any great
deed of its namesake monarch, but because the song’s English writer liked how
the name “Wenceslas” sounded.
Source: Patron Saints
598. The Cleveland Browns are the only football team never to have a symbol, mascot,
or name on their football helmets.
599. The Coffee Cantata was written by Johann Sebastian Bach.
600. The country of Sweden has the most phones per capita.
601. The country/western singer Garth Brooks attended Oklahoma State University on
a track scholarship. His event was the javelin throw.
Source: Trivia2001
602. The days between October 4 and October 15, 1582 did not “exist,” they were
skipped, due to a decree from Pope Gregory XIII, who changed the official
calendar from the Julian model to the Gregorian.
603. The Dead Sea is not a sea, but a landlocked salt lake, 45 miles long by 9 miles
wide.
604. The declawing of a pet cat involves surgery called an onychectomy, in which the
entire claw and end bone of each toe of the animal are amputated. Cat owners
considering it should know that it’s a controversial operation, with potential
adverse physical and psychological effects on the cat.
605. The descriptive phrase “eighty pence to the pound” is a British term meaning “not
all there” or “stupid.”
606. The dog and the turkey were the only two domesticated animals in ancient
Mexico.
607. The doughnut was invented in 1847 by Hanson Gregory, a New England- based
mariner.
608. The early European umbrellas were made of wood or whalebone and covered with
alpaca or oiled canvas.
609. The Eiffel tower “grows” six inches every year, due to metal expansion in warm
weather.
610. The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
611. The entire life of a house fly is spent within a few hundred feet of the area where
it was born.
612. The expressions, “Death be not proud,” “for whom the bell tolls” and “no man is
an island” all come from the poems of John Donne.
Source: Web Fun.com
613. The eyes and nose of a frog are on top of its head, enabling it to breathe and see
when most of its body is under the water.
614. The fact that blood circulates was discovered by the British physician William
Harvey.
Source: Encarta.com
615. The famed London Bridge spanned the River Thames for almost 140 years. In
1968, the city of London decided to sell its sinking bridge for $2.6 million to
Robert P. McCulloch, founder of Lake Havasu City, Arizona, who needed a bridge
to connect the city to an island in the lake. The island was created in order to
remove an obstruction that blocked water flow from the Colorado River into
Thompson Bay. It took three years to carefully dismantle, pack, ship, and
reconstruct the landmark bridge in the desert state. It cost more than $7 million
to rebuild it in Lake Havasu City. Finally, on October 10, 1971, London Bridge was
officially dedicated in Arizona before a crowd of 100,000 in a lavish ceremony.
616. The famed London Bridge which spanned the River Thames for almost 140 years
from the 1830s until 1968 now connects Arizona’s Lake Havasu City’s mainland
and island. The bridge survived a terrorist attack in 1884 and the bombing from
the Germans in both World Wars. But it could not withstand the forces of nature,
as it was sinking into the Thames River’s clay bottom.
617. The famous Citgo sign near Fenway Park in Boston is maintained not by Citgo,
but by Boston’s historical society.
618. The famous Eden-Roc Hotel, in Cap D’Antibes in the French Riviera, is often
described as the most fabulous hotel in the world. The President of the Republic,
Arab princes, stars of the stage and screen – all have stayed here in this security-
conscious Shangri-La where credit cards are not recognized, and hard cash is the
only currency. Sara and Gerald Murphy, a rich American couple with very
fashionable friends invented the summer season in the 1920s. They convinced the
Eden Roc’s owner to keep the place open after April, and filled it with guests like
F. Scott Fitzgerald and wife Zelda, Ernest Hemingway, Cole Porter, and Pablo
Picasso.
619. The famous silhouette of the Coca-Cola bottle was inspired by the coca bean.
620. The father of the pink flamingo (the plastic lawn ornament) was Don
Featherstone of Massachusetts. Featherstone graduated from art school and went
to work as a designer for Union Products, a Leominster, Massachusetts company
that manufactured flat plastic lawn ornaments. He designed the pink flamingo in
1957 as a follow-up project to his plastic duck. Today, Featherstone is president
and part owner of the company that sells an average of 250,000 to 500,000
plastic pink flamingos a year.
621. The fear of beautiful women is called “caligynephobia.”

Source: phobialist.com
622. The fear of lawsuits is called Liticaphobia.

623. The fear of the color white is called leukophobia.

624. The female name Vanessa is Greek for “butterfly.”
625. The film for the first Kodak camera was 2-3/4 inches wide, or 70 millimeters.
Kodak has been manufacturing 70-millimeter film continuously since 1888.
626. The final word given at the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee in 2000 was
“demarche,” a noun meaning a course of action or a diplomatic representation or
protest; in 1999, the final word was “logorrhea,” a noun meaning an excessive use
of words.
627. The first African American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives was
Joseph Hayne Rainey of South Carolina (1870).
628. The first American publisher of valentines was printer and artist Esther Howland.
During the 1870s, her elaborate lace cards were purchased by the wealthy, as they
cost a minimum of 5 dollars - some sold for as much as 35 dollars. Mass
production eventually brought prices down, and the affordable “penny valentine”
became popular with the lower classes.
629. The first American-based team to win the Stanley Cup was the Seattle
Metropolitans, who hoisted the trophy in 1917.
Source: TSN.com
630. The first “braces” were constructed by Pierre Fauchard in 1728. Fauchard’s
“braces” consisted of a flat strip of metal, which was connected to teeth by pieces
of thread.
631. The first career-girl comic strip was Winnie Winkle, debuting in 1920.
632. The first company ever to issue stock was “The mysterie and companie of
Merchants adventurers for the discoverie of regions, dominians, islands, and
places unknown” (later simplified to “The Russia Company”), which was
chartered in 1553.
Source: Encarta.com
633. The first Emmy Award, presented in 1949, went to a puppet. Shirley Dinsdale, a
15 year-old ventriloquist on the Eddie Cantor radio show in the 40s, received the
award for her puppet Judy Splinters.
634. The first James Bond movies wasn’t “Dr. No” (1962), it was an American
television production of “Casino Royale” (1954).
Source: The Bond Film Informant
635. The first La-Z-Boy (1928) was a reclining lawn chair made of wooden slats.
Source: ONE Magazine
636. The first modern brassiere, made from two silk handkerchiefs and some pink
ribbon, was patented in 1913 by the New York socialite Mary Phelps Jacob.
637. The first non-human to win an Academy Award was... Mickey Mouse.
Source: Ask.com
638. The first Olympic Games not held in either Europe or America was in Melbourne
(1956).
Source: MindFun.com
639. The first rap artists to top both the singles and album charts were white — Vanilla
Ice with “Ice Ice Baby” and the Beastie Boys with “License to Ill,” respectively.
640. The first U.S. patent for an animal was issued to geneticists at Harvard University
in 1988. The animal -- called an oncomouse -- is a genetically engineered mouse
that is highly susceptible to breast cancer.
641. The first umbrella factory in the U.S. was founded in 1928 in Baltimore,
Maryland.
642. The first United States silver coins were minted from metal obtained from Martha
Washington’s silver service.
Source: Encarta.com
643. The first women flight attendants in 1930 were required to weigh no more than
115 pounds, be nurses, and unmarried.
644. The flying monkeys from the film “The Wizard of OZ” had no name, other than
“flying monkeys.” However, their leader was called “Nikko.”
Source: OZ Characters/Eskimo.com
645. The former US Supreme Court Justice, Byron White once led the NFL in rushing.
Source: NFL.com
646. The “French” marigold arrived in Europe with the Spanish conquistadors during
the sixteenth century, who brought the delicate flower with them from its land of
origin. It was from Mexico, not France.
647. The G.I. Joe toy line got its name from the 1945 movie “The Story of G.I. Joe”,
which retold the story of war correspondent Ernie Pyle’s days on the front lines.
It starred Burgess Meredith and Robert Mitchum.
648. The game of a cats’ cradle – two players alternately strength a looped string over
their fingers to produce different designs – has been around since about 1760.
649. The gesture of a nose tap in Britain means secrecy or confidentiality. In Italy, a
tap to the nose signifies a friendly warning.
650. The Grammy Awards were introduced to counter the growing “threat” of rock
music.
651. The Greenwich Observatory is currently located at Cambridge University’s

Institute of Astronomy in Central England. However, the site of the observatory
was originally in Greenwich, and was arbitrarily established in 1884 as longitude
0 degrees. The observatory was moved because London’s fog made celestial
observations difficult. A plaque in the original structure marks the zero point
from which longitude is calculated. The observatory was founded in 1675 by King
Charles II to keep accurate tables of the position of the moon for the calculation
of longitude by English ships. Photographs of the sun were taken daily at the
observatory, conditions permitting, and a continuous photographic record of
sunspots was kept starting in 1873.
652. The Guiseppe Verdi opera “Aida” was commissioned to honor the opening of the
Suez Canal.
Source: Operaweb.com
653. The heart of a blue whale is the size of a small car.

Source: About.com
654. The hides of mature female blue sharks are more than twice as thick as those of
males, probably as a protection against courtship bites.
655. The highly seasoned stew of meat or fish called ragout (rhymes with “blue”) is
prepared without vegetables. The name is derived from French and means “to
restore the appetite of.”
656. The hippopotamus has the world’s shortest sperm.
657. The hippopotamus is, next to the elephants, the heaviest of all land mammals. It
may weigh as much as 8,000 pounds. It is also a close relative of the pig.
658. The Honours of Scotland are the Crown, the Sceptre, and the Sword of State. They
are emblems of kingly power when Scotland was a separate kingdom
659. The Hope diamond was acquired by King Louis XIV in 1668. It was worn 120
years later by Marie Antoinette and it now resides in the Smithsonian Institution.
This beautiful natural blue diamond weighs 44.5 carats today.
660. The Indian epic poem the “Mahabhrata” is eight times longer than “The Iliad” and
“The Odyssey” combined.
Source: AbsoluteTrivia.com
661. The initials M.G. on the famous British-made automobile stand for “Morris
Garage.”
662. The investing term “Blue Chip” comes from the color of the highest value of poker
chip, blue!
Source: Yahoo.com
663. The islands of Bermuda have no rivers or lakes. The inhabitants must use rain for
water.
664. The Italian city of Verona, where Shakespeare’s lovers Romeo and Juliet lived,
receives about 1,000 letters addressed to Juliet every Valentine’s Day.
665. The Japanese word for chef, itamae, literally means “in front of the cutting
board.”
666. The Kentucky Supreme Court has ruled that the prosecution must throw its files
wide open to the defense if the accused is suffering from amnesia.
667. The kerosene fungus can live in jet fuel tanks. If there is a minute amount of
water in the tank, the fungus can use the fuel as food.
668. The “Kilroy” of “Kilroy Was Here” fame refers to one James J. Kilroy, a shipyard
inspector from Massachusetts who marked his work thusly.
Source: Yahoo.com
669. The king of hearts is the only king without a moustache on a standard playing
card.
670. The kings in a deck of cards each represent a great king from history. The king of
spades is King David, the king of clubs is Alexander the Great, the king of hearts
is Charlemagne, and the king of diamonds is Julius Caesar.
671. The largest lake in Australia is Eyre, measuring 3,420 square miles (8,885 sq.
km).
672. The last dictionary that Noah Webster wrote contained 70,000 words and their
meanings. He wrote it with no help and by hand.
673. The Leap-The-Dips roller coaster is the oldest roller coaster in the world. It is
located within Lakemont Park in Pennsylvania. It was built in 1902, and replaced
the Gravity Railroad which burned down in 1901. The Leap-The-Dips is the last
known example in the United States of a side friction figure eight roller coaster.
The roller coaster’s configurations are 1,452 feet in length, 41 feet at the highest
point, the largest dip is 9 feet, and the steepest dip descent is 25 degrees. The
average ride time of Leap-The-Dips is 1 minute and the average speed is 10 miles
per hour.
674. The LEGO Company was founded by Ole Kirk Christiansen in Billund, Denmark,
in 1916. Today it has over 9,000 employees worldwide. The Danish words Leg and
Godt were put together to make “LEGO.” Later, it was discovered that in Latin,
the term “Lego” means “I put together” or “I assemble.”
675. The little bits of paper left over when holes are punched in data cards or tape are
called “chad.”
676. The liver is a gland, not an organ.
677. The longest recorded flight of a chicken was thirteen seconds.

678. The lungs of an average adult, unfolded and flattened out would cover an area the
size of a tennis court.
679. The meaning of the Chinese phrase “gong hay fot choy” is “Wishing you a
Prosperous New Year.”
680. The methane gas produced by 10 cows, if captured, would provide heating for a
small house for a year.
681. The minimum age for marriage of Italian girls was raised by law to 12 years in
1892.
682. The most popular form of hair removal among women is shaving. According to
the Gillette Company, 70 percent of women who remove hair do so by shaving.
683. The most popular topic of public speakers is motivation at 23 percent, followed by
leadership at 17 percent.
684. The most prolific beer drinkers by nationality are the Czechs.
Source: Yahoo.com
685. The most “wired” nation in the world (on a per-capita basis) is Finland, with
244.5 Internet users per 1000 persons.
686. The musicians Peter Frampton, Paul Simon, and James Taylor were once partners
in a professional soccer team, the NASL’s Philadelphia Freedom.
687. The muskellunge, a fierce fighting fish that can weigh in at around 70 pounds, is
the official state fish of Wisconsin.
688. The name of Frankenstein’s monster in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is Adam.

Source: Frankenstein
689. The name of the computer operating system “UNIX” stands for UNiplexed
Information and Computing System.
Source: Yahoo.com
690. The name “Wendy” was first used in J. M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan” in 1904. It was
derived from the nickname “fwendy” (“friend”), given to the author by a young
friend.
Source: Behind the Name
691. The names of some cities in the United States are the names of other U.S. states.
These include Nevada in Missouri, California Maryland, Louisiana in Missouri,
Oregon in Wisconsin, Kansas in Oklahoma, Wyoming in Ohio, Michigan in North
Dakota, Delaware in Arkansas, and Indiana in Pennsylvania.
692. The National Sporting Goods Association says one-fourth of all athletic products
are purchased during November and December, the holiday shopping period.
693. The Netherlands is credited with having the most bikes in the world. One bike per
person is the national average with an estimated 16 million bicycles nation wide.
694. The New York Board of Education barred the whipping of children in its schools
on March 4, 1908.
695. The New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was born on the 4th of July.
Source: National Baseball Hall of Fame
696. The northernmost U.S. state capital is Juneau, Alaska.

697. The Notorious B.I.G. is the only artist in rock history to score two posthumous
number one singles -- “Hypnotize” and “Mo Money Mo Problems.”
698. The number two is the only number greater than zero that, when added to or
multiplied by itself, gives the same result: 4.
699. The ocean liner Queen Elizabeth II moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel
that it consumes.
700. The odd zigzag in the North Carolina-South Carolina state line, just south of
Charlotte, resulted when boundary commissioners altered the line in 1772 to
avoid splitting the Catawba Indians between the two British colonies.
701. The official currency of Afghanistan is (drum-roll, please) the Afghani.

Source: The New York Daily News
702. The oldest continuously inhabited city in the world is Damascus, Syria.
Source: Newsweek
703. The oldest continuously published newspaper in the USA is the Hartford Courant,
founded in 1764.
Source: Hartford page, Defunct Hockey Teams site
704. The oldest existing governing body is the Althingi, which has served as the
parliamentary body of Iceland since CE 930.
Source: Althingi Web Site
705. The oldest person ever to be operated on was aged 111 years, 105 days.
706. The only living parts of a tree are its thin layer beneath the bark called the
cambium, its leaves, and the tips of its roots and branches.
707. The only US state with a single-syllable name is “Maine.”

Source: Look it up
708. The only “X”-rated film to win a Best Picture Academy Award was “Midnight
Cowboy.”
Source: AMPAS.com
709. The original name of the comic strip “Peanuts” was “Li’l Folk.”
Source: Snoopy.com
710. The Pacific Ocean flows “downhill,” from east to west: The sea level in the
Philippines is normally about two feet higher than the sea level on the coast of
Panama.
Source: CNet.com
711. The penalty for conviction of smuggling in Bangladesh is the death penalty.
712. The Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia, has nearly 68,000 miles of
telephone lines.
713. The Pentagon is twice the size of the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, and has three
times the floor space of the Empire State Building in New York. It is one of the
world’s largest office buildings.
714. The people of Hamamatsu, Japan, take part in a kite-fighting custom dating from
the 1500s. It is believed that a kite was flown to honor the birth of an ancient
prince. Another legend suggests the sport began when a ruler told his people to
fight with kites instead of with one another. The annual custom honors the first-
born sons of each family, and some of the enormous kites bear the names of the
boys. Today, the kite-fighting festival draws nearly two million people to
Hamamatsu.
715. The percentage of Africa that is wilderness is 28%, while the percentage of North
America that is wilderness is 38%.
716. The percentage of income tax paid by the average American has more than
doubled since 1953. In 1953 the average family paid 11 percent of its income out
in taxes. In 1976 it paid 23 percent.
717. The pichiciego is a little-known burrowing South American animal that is related
to the armadillo, but is smaller in size. The ending of the animal’s name is derived
from the Spanish ciego, meaning “blind.”
718. The pirate Blackbeard’s real name was Edward Teach.

Source: AbsoluteTrivia.com
719. The plain black dickey worn with a clerical collar by some clergymen is called a
rabat.
720. The planet Venus does not tilt as it goes around the Sun, so consequently, it has
no seasons. On Mars, however, the seasons are more exaggerated and last much
longer than on Earth.
721. The planet Venus is enveloped by an atmosphere of sulfuric acid.

Source: About.com
722. The planet Venus is named after the Roman goddess of love.
723. The playwright “Tennessee” Williams” given name was Thomas.

724. The poem commonly known as “The Night before Christmas” was originally titled
“A Visit from Saint Nicholas”. This poem was written by Clement Moore for his
children and some guests, one of whom anonymously sent the poem to a New
York newspaper for publication.
725. The point in a lunar orbit that is farthest from the moon is called an “apolune.”
726. The population of the American colonies in 1610 was 350.
727. The practice of breaking a bottle over a ship’s bow was introduced by the British
navy in the late 1600s.
Source: Ask.com
728. The President and Vice President of the United States are NOT limited in the
amount of sick leave they get.
Source: OPM.com
729. The psychedelic guru Timothy Leary’s five favorite movies were: 2001: A Space
Odyssey, Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise, The Meaning of Life and Trading
Places.
Source: TimothyLeary.com
730. The record for ketchup drinking belongs to Dustin Phillips (USA), who drank a
14-oz. bottle of tomato ketchup through a 1/4” straw in 33 seconds on September
23, 1999.
Source: GuinnessWorldRecords.com
731. The Royal Flag of Scotland, the Lion Rampant flag, should now legally only be
used by the monarch in relation to her capacity as Queen in Scotland. However, it
is widely used as a second national flag. However, it is not allowable to fly the flag
without permission, on a flagpole or from a building. The Lord Lyon once
threatened the town councilors of Cumbernauld with an Act passed in 1679 which
demanded the death penalty for misuse of the royal flag.
732. The rude act of raking foods into one’s already full mouth with chopsticks is
disdainfully called komibashi in Japanese.
733. The sale of chewing gum is outlawed in Singapore because it is a means of

“tainting an environment free of dirt.”
734. The SALT agreement was passed while Richard Nixon was in the White House.
735. The San Francisco cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments.
736. The saxophone, invented by the Belgian musical instrument maker Adolf Sax five
years earlier, was officially introduced into the military bands of the French Army
on July 30, 1845.
737. The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” is not an old proverb but was
invented in 1921 by an advertising executive named Fred R. Barnard.
Source: About.com
738. The scientific name for cacao beans (from whence comes chocolate) is Theobroma
cacao, which literally translated means “food of the gods.”
739. The Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee has been conducted by Scripps
Howard Newspapers and other leading newspapers since 1939. It was instituted
by the Louisville (KY) Courier-Journal in 1925.
740. The sculptor who created Mount Rushmore’s famous presidential monument was
Gutzon Borglum.
Source: Travel South Dakota
741. The seats at Fenway Park in Boston, home of the Boston Red Sox, are made of
oak.
742. The Serpentine Railway, built in 1885 at Coney Island, was the first gravity roller
coaster to tie the track end together and return passengers to their starting point
without them needing to disembark while the car was placed on the return track.
The train, with its passengers seated sideways on a wooden bench, ran atop an
undulating wooden structure. The train was slow and took several minutes to
complete its circuit.
743. The shortest player ever to win an NBA scoring title is Charles Barkley, who
stands 6’ 6”.
Source: NBA.com
744. The skeleton of an average 160 pound body weighs about 29 pounds.
745. The skin is only about as deep as the tip of a ball-point pen. First-degree burns
affect only the very top layers of the skin; second-degree burns, midway through
the skin’s thickness. Third-degree burns penetrate and damage the entire
thickness of the skin.
746. The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History houses the world’s largest
shell collection, some 15 million specimens. A smaller museum in Sanibel, Florida
owns a mere 2 million shells and claims to be the world’s only museum devoted
solely to mollusks.
747. The Soviet Union banned Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1892 “The Adventures of
Sherlock Holmes” because of the book’s references to occultism and spiritualism.
748. The Speaker of the House in Great Britain is not allowed to speak.
749. The “spring up, fall out” phenomenon says children grow twice as fast in the
spring as they do in the fall, while they gain more weight in the fall.
750. The state of Michigan claims more varieties of trees than all of Europe, which are
spread over 19 million forested acres — more than half the state.
751. The State of Nevada first legalized gambling in 1931. At that same time, the
Hoover Dam was being built and the federal government did not want its workers
(who earned 50 cents an hour) to be involved with such diversions, so they built
the town of Boulder City to house the dam workers. To this day, Boulder City is
the only city in Nevada where gambling is illegal. Hoover Dam is 726 feet tall and
660 feet thick at its base. Enough rock was excavated in its construction to build
the Great Wall of China. Contrary to old wives’ tales, no workers were buried in
the dam’s concrete.
752. The state of New York instituted the nation’s first mandatory seat-belt law on
July 12, 1984.
753. The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.

Source: Bizzarro
754. The surface of the tongue is as unique as our fingerprints.
755. The taboo against whistling backstage comes from the pre-electricity era when a
whistle was the signal for the curtains and the scenery to drop. An unexpected
whistle could cause an unexpected scene change.
756. The term “anchorman” was coined with regard to the respected Walter Cronkite
on CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, likening his lead position to that of
an anchor on a relay team. For a time in Sweden, TV news anchors were called
“Cronkiters” in honor of Cronkite.
757. The term “happy-go-lucky” has been in existence since 1665.
758. The three favorite foods of Ren Hoek (the chihuahua from “Ren and Stimpy”) are
chicken pot-pie, chocolate-covered raisins, and glazed ham.
Source: Ren and Stimpy
759. The three-toed sloth of tropical America can swim easily, but it can only drag
itself across bare ground.
760. The total monetary value of the elements in our bodies and the value of the
average person’s hide come to about $4.50.
761. The town through which Lady Godiva rode naked was Coventry, England.
Source: CET Trivia pages
762. The tradition of using a baby to signify the New Year was begun in Greece around
600 BC. It was their tradition at that time to celebrate their god of wine,
Dionysus, by parading a baby in a basket, representing the annual rebirth of that
god as the spirit of fertility. Early Egyptians also used a baby as a symbol of
rebirth.
763. The traditional sailors cap was designed to act as a floatation device. When wet,
the cap would trap an air bubble and keep a sailor’s head afloat.
764. The two-foot long bird called a Kea that lives in New Zealand likes to eat the
strips of rubber around car windows.
Source: pogolo.com
765. The U.S. Congress passed a law in 1832 requiring all American citizens to spend
one day each year fasting and praying. For the most part, people ignored the law,
and no effort was made to enforce the legislation.
766. The U.S. Congress passed laws in 1999 to discourage the practice of registering
popular or trademarked Internet domain names for the sole purpose of resale or
profit, although it is legal to do it with generic words or surnames.
767. The U.S. interstate highway system requires that 1 mile in every 5 must be
straight. These sections can be used as airstrips in a time of war or other
emergencies.
768. The United States Supreme Court once ruled Federal income tax unconstitutional.
Income tax was first imposed during the Civil War as a temporary revenue-raising
measure.
769. The Wendy’s fast food chain is named after founder Dave Thomas’s daughter -
Melinda Lou Thomas. Her older siblings had nicknamed her Wendy and it stuck.
Her father Dave got his start working for Kentucky Fried Chicken.
770. The Wodaabe, sheltered from the influences of the outside world, have unusual
customs. When Wodaabe greet each other, they may not look each other directly
in the eyes. During daylight hours, a man cannot hold his wife’s hand in public,
call her by name, or speak to her in a personal way.
771. The word banana is African, though, a word carried to the New World by
Portuguese slave traders. In the time of Alexander the Great time, bananas were
called “pala” in Athens.
772. The word “candy” comes from the Arabic word, “qandi, from “qand,” a lump of
cane sugar.
773. The word game “Scrabble” was invented by Alfred Butts.

Source: About.com
774. The word “trivia” comes from “trivium,” the name given to the disciplines that
comprise the three lower rungs of the “seven liberal arts”: grammar, rhetoric, and
logic.
Source: Common Knowledge
775. The world’s fastest reptile (measured on land) is the spiny- tailed iguana of Costa
Rica. It has been clocked at 21.7 mph.
776. The world’s biggest pair of panties, made from acrylic and lace, measured 29.4 ft.
(8.97 m.) x 14 ft. (4.26 m.). They were strung across London’s Oxford street as
part of a promotion.
Source: GuinnessWorldRecords.com
777. The world’s largest and finest natural green diamond is the 41-carat Dresden
Green. The Dresden, owned since the 1700s by the Electors of Saxony, is
surrounded by white diamonds in gold and silver settings.
778. There are 119 grooves on the edge of a quarter.
779. There are 142,000 recognized species of moths, and scientists estimate that there
are thousands more yet to be discovered.
780. There are 18 different animal shapes in the Animal Crackers cookie zoo.
781. There are 3 main groups/shapes of pathogenic bacteria: cocci (round), bacilli
(rod-shaped), and spirilla (coil-like).
782. There are 42 dots on a pair of dice.
783. There are 48 teaspoons in a cup: three teaspoons make a tablespoon and 16
tablespoons to a cup.
784. There are 640 acres in a square mile.
785. There are about 295 species of pigeons and doves in the world.
786. There are about 3,000 hot dog vendors in metropolitan New York.
787. There are many theories of how tipping came to be, but the most prevalent story
goes back several hundred years to England. When people traveled by stagecoach,
they often sent a servant ahead to make arrangements for their arrival. The
servant would give the service providers money “to ensure promptness,” which
was shortened by initials to be “tip.” Today a tip is more of a thank you after good
service than a bribe to get good service.
788. There are more collect calls placed on Father’s Day than on any other day of the
year.
789. There are more than 100 offenses that carry the death penalty in Iran.
790. There are more than 300 references to sheep and lambs, more than any other
animal, in the Bible’s Old Testament, one of the earliest records of sheep.
791. There are more than 40,000 characters in Chinese script.
792. There are more than 50,000 earthquakes throughout the world every year.
793. There are more than 700 species of plants that grow in the United States that
have been identified as dangerous if eaten. Among them are some that are
commonly favored by gardeners: buttercups, daffodils, lily of the valley, sweet
peas, oleander, azalea, bleeding heart, delphinium, and rhododendron.
794. There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.
795. There are no wild deer of any kind in Australia, and the small red deer is the only
one found in Africa.
796. There are odor technicians in the perfume trade with the olfactory skill to
distinguish 20,000 odors at 20 levels of intensity.
797. There are only about fifty geyser fields known to exist on Earth and
approximately two-thirds of those fifty are home to five or fewer active geysers.
Yellowstone National Park in the state of Wyoming has more geysers than any
other field known in the world. The park has been the site of extensive study of
the properties and characteristics of geysers.
798. There are some 50 different species of sea snakes, and all of them are venomous.
They thrive in abundance along the coast from the Persian Gulf to Japan and
around Australia and Melanesia. Their venom is ten times as virulent as that of
the cobra. Humans bitten by them have died within two-and-a-half hours.
799. There are two radios for every man, woman, and child in the United States.
800. There have been 21 theatrical James Bond films (19 “official”; 2 “unofficial”),
while Bond creator Ian Fleming only wrote 14 Bond novels.
Source: Behind the Curtain
801. There is a town in British Columbia, Canada called Poopoo Creek.

802. There is a town in Idaho called “Beer Bottle Crossing.”

803. There is evidence to suggest that ginger root is effective against motion sickness
and nausea when taken in powdered form.
804. There is just one known species of ostrich in the world – it is in the order of
Struthioniformes.
805. There were 15,700,003 Model T Ford’s manufactured, all in black.
806. Thomas Edison held more than 1,300 U.S. and foreign patents.
807. Thomas Edison, “the Wizard of Menlo Park,” established an “invention factory,”
the first industrial research laboratory, with the hope of producing a new
invention every ten days. In one 4-year period, he obtained 300 patents or one
every five days.
808. Thomas Edison’s first major invention was the quadruplex telegraph. Unlike
other telegraphs at the time, it could send four messages at the same time over
one wire.
809. Thomas Jefferson invented the dumbwaiter.
810. Those famous “dogs playing poker” pictures were painted by an artist named
Cassius Marcellus Coolidge (1844-1937), whose nickname was “Cash.”
Source: The von Hoffman Bros.’ Big Damn Book of Sheer Manliness
811. Though Frederick Banting and Charles Best were co-discovers of insulin, only
Banting was officially recognized for the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1923. He
shared his winnings with Best, though.
812. Three U.S. presidents have been the sons of clergymen: Chester Arthur, Grover
Cleveland, and Woodrow Wilson.
813. Three Whigs have served as president of the United States: William Henry
Harrison, Zachary Taylor, and Millard Fillmore.
814. Time magazine reports that in Russia, buying carnations or roses is a prerequisite
for a first date. They must be given in odd numbers, because flowers given in even
numbers are reserved for funerals.
815. To enforce integration, Dwight Eisenhower ordered the U.S. National Guard to
escort students into the Little Rock High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.
816. To say “hello” in Sri Lanka, a person must place their palms together under the
chin and bow slightly.
817. To test avocados, mangoes, or papayas for ripeness, gently fondle the fruit - never
squeeze it - and if the flesh yields to the touch, it’s ready to eat.
818. Today, 40 percent of the world’s newspapers are printed on paper made from
Canada’s forests.
819. Today’s custom of using mistletoe to decorate houses at Christmas is a survival of

European beliefs and traditions. In Europe, branches of mistletoe were hung from
ceilings to ward off evil spirits. In some countries, they were placed over house
and stable doors to prevent the entrance of witches.
820. Tom Selleck was originally cast as Indiana Jones, the role made immortal by
Harrison Ford in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Selleck declined because he was
committed to his television series, “Magnum P.I.”
821. Tonto Natural Bridge in Arizona is the largest natural travertine bridge in the
world, spanning Pine Creek 183 feet high. Mineral springs rich with limestone
formed the massive bridge one drop at a time. Hats, shoes, or other items left in
the creek become encrusted with travertine and appear to be made of stone.
822. Too much fluid putting pressure on your eardrums causes earaches. They are
often a result of infection, allergies, or a virus.
823. Topless saleswomen are legal in Liverpool, England -- but only in tropical fish
stores.
Source: Bizzarro
824. Traditionally, a Jewish baby is not named for a living person. There is a concern
that the “Angel of Death” will mistake the infant for the older person if the names
are the same.
825. Traditionally, Encyclopedia Britannica has called upon experts to write entries on
their respective fields of expertise. Among them Harry Houdini on “conjuring,”
and Sigmund Freud on “psychoanalysis.”
826. Tug-of-war was a Modern Olympic event until 1920.

827. Twitchers are birdwatchers in England. In the U.S., they are called birders.
828. Two towns in Vermont claim to be President Chester A. Arthur’s birthplace, but
recent research supports his opponents’ charges that he was born in Canada, and
therefore, was not eligible to be president under the U.S. Constitution.
829. U.S. Patent #D219,584 was issued in 1970 to veteran movie actor Steve McQueen.
He was famous not only for his movies but also for racing cars and working on
engines off-camera as well. A byproduct of his racing hobby was the invention of
a bucket seat.
830. U.S. President Bill Clinton is allergic to dust, mold, pollen, cats, Christmas trees,
and dairy products.
831. Unknown people made the first glassware about 3,500 years ago in Mesopotamia.
832. Until he’s about 21 years old, the male Indian elephant isn’t interested in
romancing a female elephant.
833. Until recent years, people living in remote areas of Afghanistan and Ethiopia were
immunized against smallpox by having dried powdered scabs from victims of the
disease blown up their noses. This treatment was invented by a Chinese Buddhist
nun in the eleventh century. It is the oldest known form of vaccination.
834. Until the mid 1800s, paper was made from cotton rags.
835. Upon her death in 1967, writer Dorothy Parker left most of her estate to civil
rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. She left her ashes to writer Lillian Hellman,
who reportedly never claimed them.
836. “Utah” is from the Navajo word meaning “upper.”

837. Valentine’s Day means chocolate, and lots of it. According to U.S. candy
manufacturers, Americans spend more than $1,105 million each Valentine’s Day
on candy, making it the fourth biggest holiday of the year for confectionery
purchases. In order, the top three holidays for candy sales are Halloween,
Christmas, and Easter.
838. Vellum, a fine-quality writing parchment, is prepared from animal skin: lambs,
kids, and very young calves. Coarser, tougher types are made from the skins of
male goats, wolves, and older calves. Vellum replaced papyrus and was
superseded by paper.
839. Victorian publications never dared show a bed in any of their advertisements.
When illustrations of the bedroom were required, the bed itself was hidden by
curtains.
840. “Wet” means “simpleton” in Australian slang. The Wet is the rainy season in
Northern Australia.
841. When baby Opossums are born, they are so small that an entire litter can fit in a
tablespoon. They live inside their mother’s pouch for three months before
climbing out and riding on her back.
842. When Ben Franklin was living in England, he used the breast stroke during his
regular swims across the Thames River - the same stroke used by Matthew Webb
in 1875 when he became the first person to swim the English Channel.
843. When Cher was a teenager, she got her start in the recording industry as a backup
singer for the famed producer Phil Spector (“Be My Baby,” et al).
844. When Russian men engage in conversation, the distance between the two is
typically about ten inches. This is considered a comfortable proximity; American
men, on the other hand, consider something closer to two feet as preferable.
845. When written in Chinese, the word “crisis” is composed of two characters -- one
representing danger, the other representing opportunity.
Source: Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations
846. While fighting with the French underground during World War II, Jacques Yves
Cousteau invented the aqualung.
847. Wine will spoil if exposed to light; hence, tinted bottles.

848. “Wings” (1927) was the first and only silent film to win the Best Picture Academy
Award.
849. Winking at women, even to express friendship, is considered bad manners in

Australia.
850. With 382,650 babies being born each day and 144,902 people dying daily, the
world population increases about 237,748 people a day.
851. With 980-plus species, bats make up more than 23 percent of all known mammals
by species.
852. With more than 105 million pounds in 1997, Georgia is the world”s top pecan
producer; Texas came in second with 90 million pounds.
853. “Within the Walls Rodeo Day” is when prisoners wear black and white striped
outfits and take part in volunteer rodeos within the walls of the prison.
854. Without using precision instruments, Eratosthenes measured the radius of Earth
in the third century B.C., and came within 1 percent of the value determined by
today’s technology.
855. Women manufacture far less serotonin, the key mood-regulating brain chemical
than men. This could explain why they’re more likely to suffer from certain
psychological problems such as depression.
856. Women’s hair on average is about half the diameter of men’s hair.
857. You CAN catch “cooties.” The word cooties likely come from the Malay word
“kutu,” which means “body lice.”
Source: Is Greenland Really Green?
858. Your birthday is not a special day after all -- you share it with no fewer than nine
million others.
859. Your ears aren’t just good for helping you hear. They help you keep your balance
as well. Near the top of the cochlea are three loops called the semi-circular canals.
These canals are full of fluid that moves when you move your head. It pushes up
against the cilia and sends messages to your brain that tells it how your body is
moving. You know that feeling of dizziness after you have been spinning around?
Well, the fluid in you ears spun as well. That makes the cilia move in all different
directions and confused your brain.
860. Zachary Taylor, formerly a professional soldier, never voted. He didn’t even vote
in the election that elected him U.S. president.

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2. “60 Minutes” is the only TV program that has no theme song.

5. A baby partridge is called a “cheeper.”

8. A ballet enthusiast is called a balletomane.

27. A female peacock is called a “peahen.”

29. A Firkin is a British measurement usually equal to a quarter barrel.

31. A hummingbird weighs less than a penny.

33. A local ordinance in Atwoodville, Connecticut prohibits people from playing

44. About one fifth of Australia is covered by its eleven deserts.

79. An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.

95. Australia is divided into two territories and six states.

113. Before deciding to try a career in films and television, actor-director-producer

115. Before settling on “Cornhuskers” in 1899, the University of Nebraska’s nicknames

133. Butterflies taste with their feet.

136. Camel hair brushes are actually made of squirrel hair.

154. China produces about 70 percent of the world’s silk supply.

155. Chocolate doesn’t cause acne. Experiments conducted at the University of

157. Coca Cola was originally colored green.

158. “Colonial goose” is the name Australians give to stuffed mutton.

169. Despite its hump, a camel has a straight spine.

214. Every plant in Tomorrowland at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, is edible.

216. Flamingo tongues were a common delicacy at Roman feasts.

224. Forty-seven czars are buried within the Kremlin walls.

228. George Washington’s presidential salary was $25,000/annum.

236. Half of all Americans live within 50 miles of their birthplace.

244. Helen of Troy was queen of Sparta.

245. Henri Nestle - The Name’s Familiar

247. Henry Ford is credited with inventing the charcoal briquet.

253. “Honolulu” means “sheltered harbor.”

258. Ichigensan okotowari is a custom developed in ryotei (restaurants which serve

262. If an object has no molecules, the concept of temperature is meaningless. That’s

302. In Australia’s metropolitan Melbourne, about 26 percent of the land is reserved

303. In Australian slang, to be “spliced” means to be married.

305. In British English, a booger is called a “bogey” or “bogie.”

313. In Fairbanks, AK, it is considered an offense to feed alcoholic beverages to a

314. In fourteenth-century England, the number of males named Robert, William,

345. In trucking circles, a “bumper sticker” is a tailgater who is following another

351. Israel is one-quarter the size of the state of Maine.

354. It is a common misconception that Mel Gibson is actually Australian. He was

356. It is estimated that manatees live a maximum of 50 to 60 years.

385. Leonardo da Vinci invented the scissors.

394. Mohandas Gandhi’s middle name was Karamchand.

396. Montpelier, VT is the least populated state capital in the U.S.

408. Napoleon favored mathematicians and physical scientists, but excluded

410. Napoleon suffered from ailurophobia, the fear of cats.

417. No serpents are found in present-day Ireland.

423. October is “National Cookie Month.”

430. Okonomiyaki is considered to be Japan’s answer to pizza. It consists of a

437. On the average, there are eight peas in a pod.

454. Oppossums do NOT sleep upside-down hanging by their tails.

456. Panama hats actually originated in Ecuador.

467. Pleonexia is a clinical term for morbid greediness.

474. Porcupines float in water!

492. Robert E. Lee’s dying words were “Strike the Tent.”

495. Rosemary Clooney’s signature song, “Come On-A-My-House,” was written by

498. Rulership by words is called logocracy.

503. Scientists believe that hydrogen comprises approximately 90 to 99 percent of all

509. Selenologists study the Moon, as geologists study Earth.

510. Senectitude is another word for old age.

513. “Sherbet” is Australian slang for beer.