Useless Facts

“Duff” is the decaying organic matter found on a forest floor.

It is impossible to drown and not die. Technically the term ‘drowning’ refers to the process of taking water into the lungs, not to death caused by that process.

Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand.

11% of the world is left-handed.

The Falkland Isles (pop. about 2000) has over 700000 sheep (350 per person).

The average Japanese household watches more than 10 hours of television a day.

The Brimstone butterfly (Gonepterix rhamni) has the longest lifetime of the adult butterflies: 9-10 months.

A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.

A full moon is nine times brighter than a half moon.

An average human loses about 200 head hairs per day.

Dartboards are made out of horse hairs.

On average, 2 newborns will be given to the wrong parents every day.

In the U.S, Frisbees outsell footballs, baseballs and basketballs combined.

The human body is comprised of 80% water.

It is believed that Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.

Despite a population of over a billion, China has only about 200 family names.

Buckingham Palace has 602 rooms.

The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.

Beethoven dipped his head in cold water before he composed.

The Olympic was the sister ship of the Titanic, and she provided twenty-five years of service.

Your ribs move about 5 million times a year, every time you breathe!

Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.

Starfish have no brains.

Children grow faster in the springtime.

The national anthem of Greece has 158 verses.

During it’s lifetime an oyster changes its sex from male to female and back several times.

Cephalacaudal recapitulation is the reason our extremities develop faster than the rest of us.

Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.

Daniel Boone hated coonskin caps.

More people speak English in China than the United States.

Butterflies taste with their hind feet.

1 in 5 of the world’s doctors are Russian.

Rape is reported every six minutes in the U.S.

Two-thirds of the world’s eggplant is grown in New Jersey.

Olympus Mons is the largest volcano in our solar system.

Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.

In space you cannot cry because there is no gravity to make the tears flow.

Elephants have the longest pregnancy in the animal kingdom at 22 months. The longest human pregnancy on record is 17 months, 11 days.

California consumes more bottled water than any other product.

In 1936, American track star Jesse Owens beat a race horse over a 100-yard course. The horse was given a head start.

A large flawless emerald is worth more than a similarly large flawless diamond.

Cher’s last name was “Sarkissian.” She changed it because no one could pronounce it.

Mexican free-tailed bats sometimes fly up to two miles high to feed or to catch tail-winds that carry them over long distances at speeds of more than 60 miles per hour.

A man will ejaculate approximately 18 quarts of semen in his lifetime.

It is estimated that millions of trees are planted by forgetful squirrels.

In “Silence of the Lambs”, Hannibal Lector (Anthony Hopkins) never blinks.

In Kentucky, it is illegal to carry ice-cream in your back pocket.

A cat uses its whiskers to determine if a space is too small to squeeze through.

A cesium atom in an atomic clock beats 9,192,631,770 times a second.

A group of crows is called a murder.

At latitude 60 degrees south you can sail all the way around the world.

The zorilla is the smelliest animal on the planet. It’s anal glands can be smelled from half a mile away.

The first bomb the Allies dropped on Berlin in WWII killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.

99% of the solar system mass is concentrated in the sun.

Ketchup was sold in the 1830s as medicine.

Degringolade means to fall and disintegrate.

The Amazon is the world’s largest river, 3,890 miles (6,259 km) long.

Grapes explode when you put them in the microwave.

A pound of houseflies contains more protein than a pound of beef

A donkey will sink in quicksand but a mule won’t.

Nepal is the only country that doesn’t have a rectangular flag.

Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 170 miles (274 km) per hour.

“Lassie” was played by a group of male dogs; the main one was named Pal.

In May 1948, Mt Ruapehu and Mt Ngauruhoe, both in New Zealand, erupted simultaneously.

A rhinoceros horn is made of compacted hair.

The international telephone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.

It’s illegal to spit on the sidewalk in Norfolk, Virginia.

In the four professional major north american sports (baseball, basketball, football and hockey) only 7 teams have nicknames that do not end with an s.

A lion in the wild usually makes no more than 20 kills a year.

Woodpecker scalps, porpoise teeth, and giraffe tails have all been used as money.

Shakespeare invented the words “assassination” and “bump.”

There is no solid proof of who built the Taj Mahal.

Australian Rules football was originally designed to give cricketers something to play during the off season.

The male seahorse carries the eggs until they hatch instead of the female.

Ignoramus: The grand jury used to write ignoramus on the back of indictments not found or not to be sent to court. This was often constructed as an indication of the stupidity of the jury, hence its present meaning.

Camels chew in a figure 8 pattern.

India has a Bill of Rights for cows.

Jackals have one more pair of chromosomes than dogs or wolves.

Dartboards are made out of horse hairs.

The average life of a taste bud is 10 days.

In 1980, a Las Vegas hospital suspended workers for betting on when patients would die.

Dibble means to drink like a duck.

It was once against the law to have a pet dog in a city in Iceland.

A B-25 bomber crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building on July 28, 1945.

A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue!

In France, there’s a place called Y.

One in every 4 Americans has appeared on television at least once in their life.

In ancient Rome, when a man testified in court he would swear on his testicles.

The average human will shed 40 pounds of skin in a lifetime.

A Virginia law requires all bathtubs to be kept inside the house

Truck driving is the most dangerous occupation by accidental deaths (799 in 2001).

A group of toads is called a knot.

At any given time, there are at least 1,800 thunderstorms in progress over the earth’s atmosphere.

The top butterfly flight speed is 12 miles per hour. Some moths can fly 25 miles per hour!

More than 30% of the people in the world have never made or received a telephone call.

Termites have been known to eat food twice as fast when heavy metal music is playing.

All female bees in a given hive are sisters.

Owls are the only birds that can see the color blue.

The Automated Teller Machine (ATM) was introduced in England in 1965.

Cats have over 100 vocal sounds; dogs only have 10.

It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up.

Mailing an entire building has been illegal in the U.S. since 1916 when a man mailed a 40,000-ton brick house across Utah to avoid high freight rates.

A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.

Johnny Appleseed planted apples so that people could use apple cider to make alcohol.

City with the most Roll Royces per capita: Hong Kong.

The past-tense of the English word “dare” is “durst”

Almonds are a member of the peach family.

Humans use a total of 72 different muscles in speech.

Baby robins eat 14 feet of earthworms every day

The most powerful earthquake to strike the United States occurred in 1811 in New Madrid, Missouri. The quake shook more than one million square miles, and was felt as far as 1,000 miles away.

In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.

Babies are born without knee caps. They don’t appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age.

The Bible, the world’s best-selling book, is also the world’s most shoplifted book.

More than 1,000 different languages are spoken on the continent of Africa.

It is forbidden for aircraft to fly over the Taj Mahal.

Any free moving liquid in outer space will form itself into a sphere because of its surface tension.

“Canada” is an Indian word meaning “Big Village”.

In 1984, a Canadian farmer began renting advertising space on his cows.

Bees have 5 eyes. There are 3 small eyes on the top of a bee’s head and 2 larger ones in front.

Certain frogs can be frozen solid then thawed, and continue living.

55.1% of all US prisoners are in prison for drug offenses.

Hawaii is the only coffee producing state.

The first McDonald’s restaurant in Canada was in Richmond, British Columbia.

Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin both married their first cousins

Half of all bank robberies take place on a Friday.

Sharon Stone was the first Star Search spokes model.

Elvis had a twin brother named Garon, who died at birth, which is why Elvis middle name was Aron.

In 1980, a Las Vegas hospital suspended workers for betting on when patients would die.

Dr. Seuss pronounced his name “soyce”.

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

In Utah, it is illegal to swear in front of a dead person.

Due to precipitation, for a few weeks, K2 is taller than Mt. Everest.

A scholar who studies the Marquis de Sade is called a Sadian not a Sadist.

What is called a “French kiss” in the English speaking world is known as an “English kiss” in France.

Insects outnumber humans 100,000,000 to one.

Table tennis balls have been known to travel off the paddle at speeds up to 160 km/hr.

Experts at Intel say that micro processor speed will double every 18 months for at least the next 10 years.

The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.

Your tongue is the only muscle in your body that is attached at only one end.

A duck’s quack doesn’t echo, and no one knows why.

Elwood Edwards did the voice for the AOL sound files (i.e. “You’ve got Mail!”).

Americans are responsible for about 1/5 of the world’s garbage annually.

Lizards can self-amputate their tails for protection. It grows back after a few months.

The most frequently named bugs from the Bible are: Locust: 24, Moth: 11, Grasshopper: 10, Scorpion: 10, Caterpillar: 9, and Bee: 4.

Dr. Seuss pronounced his name so that it would rhyme with rejoice.

The thyroid cartilage is more commonly known as the adams apple.

If you travel across Russia, you will cross seven time zones.

If you feed a seagull Alka-Seltzer, its stomach will explode.

The people of France eat more cheese than any other country in the world.

Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand.

In Baltimore USA it is illegal to wash or scrub a sink regardless of how dirty it is.

Sherlock Holmes NEVER said “Elementary, my dear Watson”

In 1949, forecasting the relentless march of science, Popular Mechanics said computers in the future may weigh no more than 5 tons.

There is a city called Rome on every continent.

Donkeys kill more people than plane crashes.

It takes 12,000 head of cattle to produce one pound of adrenaline.

In Bangladesh, kids as young as 15 can be jailed for cheating on their finals.

A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

Blondes have more hair than dark-haired people do.

Honey does not spoil.

Adult elephants can’t jump.

Jet lag was once called boat lag, before there were jets.

There are about 450 types of cheese in the world. 240 come from France.

The number “four” is considered unlucky in Japan because it is pronounced the same as “death”.

The electric chair was invented by a dentist.

England is smaller than New England.

It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

Switzerland is the only country with a square flag.

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

Ancient Egyptians shaved off their eyebrows to mourn the deaths of their cats.

Illinois has the highest number of personalized license plates than any other state.

The average American/Canadian will eat about 11.9 pounds of cereal per year!

There are about a million ants per person. Ants are very social animals and will live in colonies that can contain almost 500,000 ants.

More than 90% of the Nicaraguan people are Roman Catholic.

Los Angeles’ full name is “El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula”.

A necropsy is an autopsy on animals.

Rugby, North Dakota is the geographical center of North America.

A hydrodaktulpsychicharmonica is a variety of musical glasses.

Karoke means empty orchestra in Japanese.

Although modern images of India often show poverty and lack of development, India was the richest country on earth until the time of British invasion in the early 17th Century.

The U.S. Post Office handles 43 percent of the world’s mail.

A lightning bolt generates temperatures five times hotter than those found on the sun’s surface.

There is actually no danger in swimming right after you eat, though it may feel uncomfortable.

In the Scottish Hebrides, an island is defined as being an island only if it is big enough to sustain 1 sheep.

In the Arctic, the sun sometimes appears to be square.

Non-dairy creamer is flammable.

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

Camel’s have three eyelids.

The average person laughs 10 times a day!

Butterflies range in size from a tiny 1/8 inch to a huge almost 12 inches.

There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.

Antarctica is the only continent that does not have land areas below sea level.

The city of Venice stands on about 120 small islands.

Claustrophobia is the fear of small spaces.

Fur seals get miserably sick when they’re carried aboard ships.

A housefly will regurgitate its food and eat it again.

The original story from “Tales of 1001 Arabian Nights” begins, “Aladdin was a little Chinese boy.”

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

Kuwait is about 60% male (highest in the world). Latvia is about 54% female (highest in the world).

The Hawaiian alphabet has only 12 letters.

Someone paid $14,000 for the bra worn by Marilyn Monroe in the film ‘Some Like It Hot’.

A fierce gust of wind blew 45 year old Vittorio Luise’s car into a rover near Naples, Italy, in 1980. He managed to break a window, climb out and swim to shore–where a tree blew over and killed him.

There are approximately 100 million acts of sexual intercourse each day.

Entomophobia is the fear of insects.

Every US president has worn glasses (just not always in public).

A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.

Hair is made from the same substance as fingernails.

The Nullarbor Plain of Australia covers 100,000 square miles (160,900 km) without a tree.

Salt Lake City has a law against carrying an unwrapped ukulele on the street.

A snail can have 25,000 teeth.

No matter where you stand in Michigan, you are never more than 85 miles from a Great Lake.

Rudyard Kipling, living in Vermont in the 1890′s invented the game of snow golf. He would paint his golf balls red so that they could be located in the snow.

You can lead a cow upstairs but not downstairs.

It is physically impossible for pigs to look up in the sky.

A healthy (non-colorblind) human eye can distinguish between 500 shades of gray.

A syzygy occurs when three atronomical bodies line up.

Shakespeare invented the word “assassination” and “bump.”

Your heart beats over 100,000 times a day!

The Beetham Tower has 47 floors.

There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.

All polar bears are left-handed.

George Washington is the only man whose birthday is a legal holiday in every state of the U.S as of a few years ago.

Cats’ urine glows under a black light.

For every 230 cars that are made, 1 will be stolen.

Dr. Seuss coined the word nerd in his 1950 book “If I Ran The Zoo.”

A word or sentence that is the same front and back (racecar, kayak) is called a “palindrome”.

Abraham Lincoln’s ghost is said to haunt the White House.

Greenland is the largest island in the world.

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

One in eight million people has progeria, a disease that causes people to grow faster than they age.

An average human scalp has 100,000 hairs.

A lion’s roar can be heard from five miles away.

There are more types of insects in one tropical rain forest tree than there are in the entire state of Vermont.

Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds; dogs only have about ten.

Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, and had only ONE testicle.

The pancreas produces Insulin.

Americans on the average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.

Relative to size, the strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.

Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself.

A two-bit moon is in its first quarter.

Dreamt is the only English word that ends in the letters amt

Pepsi originally contained pepsin, thus the name.

Bulgarians are known to be the biggest yogurt eaters in the world.

0.3% of all road accidents in Canada involve a Moose.

Maine is the only state that has borders with only one other state.

Male bats have the highest rate of homosexuality of any mammal.

The surface of the human skin is 6.5 square feet (2m).

The largest taxi fleet in the world is found in Mexico City. The city boasts a fleet of over 60,000 taxis.

Britain’s shortest river is the Brun which runs through Burnley in Lancashire.

Giraffes and rats can last longer without water than camels.

More people are killed each year from bees than from snakes.

Disneyland opened in 1955.

Bacteria, the tiniest free-living cells, are so small that a single drop of liquid contains as many as 50 million of them.

Corduroy comes from the French, cord du roi or cloth of the king.

It is illegal to frown at cows in Bladworth, Saskatchewan.

There were 240 pedestrian fatalities in New York City in 1994.

In Japan, watermelons are squared. It’s easier to stack them that way.

Bird droppings are chief export of Nauru, an island nation in the Western Pacific.

Common Cobra venom is not on the list of top 10 venoms yet it is still 40 times more toxic than cyanide.

A species of earthworm in Australia grows up to 10 feet in length.

An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.

A female swine, or a sow, will always have a even number of teats or nipples, usually twelve.

It takes 8.5 minutes for light to get from the sun to earth.

Lightning strikes the earth about 8 million times a day.

Contrary to popular belief, suicide rates during the Christmas holiday are low. The highest rates are during the spring.

Christmas trees have been sold in the U.S. since 1850.

Norwegian scientists have hypothesized that Rudolph’s red nose is probably the result of a parasitic infection of his respiratory system.

Christmas trees usually grow for about 15 years before they are sold.

Alabama was the first state in the United States to officially recognize Christmas in 1836.

The country code for Russia is “007″.

Angel Falls in Venezuela is the world’s highest waterfall, at 3,212 feet (979 m).

A crocodiles tongue is attached to the roof of its mouth.

Great Britain was the first county to issue postage stamps. Hence, the postage stamps of Britain are the only stamps in the world not to bear the name of the country of origin. However, every stamp carries a relief image or a silhouette of the monarch’s head instead.

Your stomach needs to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it would digest itself.

Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin!

There are 1,792 steps in the Eiffel Tower

Koalas never drink water. They get fluids from the eucalyptus leaves they eat.

Arabic numerals are not really Arabic; they were created in India.

EMI stands for ‘ Electrical and Musical Instruments’.

Elephants only sleep for two hours each day.

In space, astronauts cannot cry, because there is no gravity, so the tears can’t flow.

Hara kiri is an impolite way of saying the Japanese word seppuku which means, literally, belly splitting.

An Olympic gold medal must contain 92.5 percent silver

There are 240 dots on an arcade Pac-Man game

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

The first female guest host of “Saturday Night Live” was Candace Bergen.

A man’s beard grows fastest when he anticipates sex.

King Louis XIX ruled France for 15 minutes.

Because of the rotation of the earth, an object can be thrown farther if it is thrown west.

If a frog’s mouth is held open for too long the frog will suffocate.

A duck has three eyelids.

In most watch advertisements the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.

An American urologist bought Napoleon’s penis for $40,000.

Antarctica is the only continent that does not have land areas below sea level.

Jimmy Carter was the first U.S. President to be born in a hospital.

Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious, meaning containing arsenic.

160 cars can drive side by side on the Monumental Axis in Brazil, the world’s widest road.

Mongolia is the largest landlocked country.

Maine is the only state (in USA) whose name is just one syllable.