Here is some facts from the book "Who Knew?

-Things you Didn't know about things

you know well".
==============================
If jell-o is hooked up to an EEG, it registers movements virtually identical to
the brain waves of a healthy adult.
One hundred shares of McDonald's stock purchased for $2,250 when first offered i
n 1965 was worth more then 1.5million in 1995.
McDonalds milkshakes contain seaweed-in the form of an extract called carrageena
n, a thickener and emulsifier that keeps the butterfat in the shake from seperat
ing out.
Coco-Cola was first marketed as "the best cure for a hangover," and early produc
tion contained trace amounts of coca leaves, which, when processed, render cocai
n.
On the one-dollar bill, there is an owl in the upper left-hand corner of the "1"
and a spider hidden in the upper right.
Three of the first five U.S. Presidents-John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James
Monroe-died on July 4th.
The Pentagon, one of the largest office buildings in the world, has twice as man
y bathrooms as is necessary, because when it was built Virginia laws still requi
red seperate toiled facilities for blacks and whites.
Sunglasses date back to fifteenth-century China, where they were worn by judges
to conceal their expressions while presiding over court.
The computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey was called HAL as a tongue in cheek refere
nce to IBM. THe name was derived from the fact that the letters H-A-L precede th
e letters I-B-M in the alphabet.
In the movie PULP FICTION, the word F&#@ is used 257 times.
The original Volkswagen Beetle was commissioned by Adolf Hitler and designed by
Ferdinand Porsche.
The word NEWS was coined from the fact that early daily papers carried images of
globes on their mastheads and boasted that their reports came from all directio
ns-NORTH, EAST, WEST, SOUTH.
The three tone musical chime that identifies NBC is composed of three notes-G,E,
and C-which is short for the company's original (and current) owner, General El
ectric Corporation.
The fifty-two playing cards in a typical deck represent the fifty-two weeks in a
year; the four suits, the four seasons. Red and Black represents day and night.
The Ouija board got its name from the combination of the French and German words
for yes--oui and ja.
On average we forget 80% of what we learn on any given day.
500 Mostly Useless Facts
http://www.djtech.net/humor/useless_facts.htm
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1. Most American car horns honk in the key of F.
2. The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan."
3. Barbie's full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.
4. Every time you lick a stamp, you consume 1/10 of a calorie.
5. The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
6. Studies show that if a cat falls off the seventh floor of a building it has
about thirty percent less chance of surviving than a cat that falls off the twen
tieth floor. It supposedly takes about eight floors for the cat to realize what
is occurring, relax and correct itself.
7. Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks otherwise i
t will digest itself.
8. The citrus soda 7-UP was created in 1929; '7' was selected after the original
7-ounce containers and 'UP' for the direction of the bubbles.
9. 101 Dalmatians, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, and Mulan are the only Disney
cartoons where both parents are present and don't die throughout the movie. .
10. A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.
11. 'Stewardesses' is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.
12. To escape the grip of a crocodile's jaws, push your thumbs into its eyeballs
- it will let you go instantly.
13. Reindeer like to eat bananas.
14. No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver and purple
.
15. The word "samba" means "to rub navels together."
16. Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots.
17. The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
18. The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II Kill
ed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
19. More people are killed annually by donkeys than airplane crashes.
20. A 'jiffy' is a unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
21. A whale's penis is called a dork.
22. Because of the rotation of the earth, an object can be thrown farther if it
is thrown west.
23. The average person spends 6 months of their life sitting at red lights.
24. In 1912 a law passed in Nebraska where drivers in the country at night were
required to stop every 150 yards, send up a skyrocket, wait eight minutes for th
e road to clear before proceeding cautiously, all the while blowing their horn a
nd shooting off flares.
25. More Monopoly money is printed in a year, than real money throughout the wor
ld.
17. The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
Tesla "invented" the electric chair...
Electricity
Although most people associate electricity with Thomas Edison and the late 19th
Century, it was harnessed and put to use much earlier by several scientists in v
arious countries. The Leyden jar, a device for storing and discharging static e
lectricity, was invented in 1745. The amount of charge stored in the Leyden jar
was enough to kill small animals such as birds, fish and mice, and its demonstr
ators did just that to show its capabilities. In 1786 Luigi Galvani posited tha
t electricity was the essence of life. He and others ran charges through dead a
nimals and eventually corpses, reanimating them in frightening ways.
MORE:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_m ... air/2.html
At its peak, during World War II, Fort Knox held enough pure gold to make 90 Sta
tues of Liberty.
The door to the gold vault in Fort Knox weighs 24.6 tons.
All the gold ever mined would make a cube 66 feet on a side.
At its peak in 1943, the Pentagon had a working population of about 33,000. Toda
y about 23,000 employees work in the building.
Because of its size, the Pentagon operates much like a small city; it has it's o
wn shopping mall, bank, power plant, water and sewage facilities, fire station,
police force, fast food restaurants and a "mayor".
The largest diamond found in the United States was a 40.23 carat white diamond.
It was found in 1924 and nicknamed the "Uncle Sam."
The world's deepest gold mine is seven kilometers below the surface of the Earth
.
During the Gold Rush in 1849, some people paid as much as $100 for a simple glas
s of water.
Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles
de Porciuncula" and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size, "L.A."
To "testify" was based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement made by
swearing on their testicles.
The national flag of Italy was designed by Napoleon Bonaparte.
There is a city called Rome on every continent.
The term "Mayday" is used for signaling for help. It comes from the French term
"M'aidez" which is pronounced "MayDay" and means, "Help Me."
Spain literally means 'the land of rabbits.'
Windmills always turn counter-clockwise. Except for the windmills in Ireland.
If the population of the Earth continued to increase at its present rate indefin
itely, by 3530 A.D. the total mass of human flesh and blood would equal the mass
of the Earth. By 6826 A.D. it would equal the mass of the known universe.
The Nobel Prize resulted from a late change in the will of Alfred Nobel, who did
not want to be remembered after his death as a propagator of violence - he inve
nted dynamite.
"Underground" is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with
the letters "und."
A bat is the only mammal that flies.
A group of crows is called a murder.
A hamlet is a village without a church and a town is not a city until it has a c
athedral.
MAFIA is an acronym for Morte Alla Francia Italia Anela, or "Death to the French
is Italy's Cr
20 things you didnt know about death.
1 The practice of burying the dead may date back 350,000 years, as evidenced by
a 45-foot-deep pit in Atapuerca, Spain, filled with the fossils of 27 hominids o
f the species Homo heidelbergensis, a possible ancestor of Neanderthals and mode
rn humans.
2 Never say die: There are at least 200 euphemisms for death, including to be in
Abrahams bosom, just add maggots, and sleep with the Tribbles (a Star Trek favorite).
3 No American has died of old age since 1951.
4 That was the year the government eliminated that classification on death certi
ficates.
5 The trigger of death, in all cases, is lack of oxygen. Its decline may prompt
muscle spasms, or the agonal phase, from the Greek word agon, or contest.
6 Within three days of death, the enzymes that once digested your dinner begin t
o eat you. Ruptured cells become food for living bacteria in the gut, which rele
ase enough noxious gas to bloat the body and force the eyes to bulge outward.
7 So much for recycling: Burials in America deposit 827,060 gallons of embalming
fluidformaldehyde, methanol, and ethanolinto the soil each year. Cremation pumps
dioxins, hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, and carbon dioxide into the air.
8 Alternatively . . . A Swedish company, Promessa, will freeze-dry your body in
liquid nitrogen, pulverize it with high-frequency vibrations, and seal the resul
ting powder in a cornstarch coffin. They claim this ecological burial will decompo
se in 6 to 12 months.
9 Zoroastrians in India leave out the bodies of the dead to be consumed by vultu
res.
10 The vultures are now dying off after eating cattle carcasses dosed with diclo
fenac, an anti-inflammatory used to relieve fever in livestock.
11 Queen Victoria insisted on being buried with the bathrobe of her long-dead hu
sband, Prince Albert, and a plaster cast of his hand.
12 If this doesnt work, were trying in vitro! In Madagascar, families dig up the b
ones of dead relatives and parade them around the village in a ceremony called f
amadihana. The remains are then wrapped in a new shroud and reburied. The old sh
roud is given to a newly married, childless couple to cover the connubial bed.
13 During a railway expansion in Egypt in the 19th century, construction compani
es unearthed so many mummies that they used them as fuel for locomotives.
14 Well, yeah, theres a slight chance this could backfire: English philosopher Fr
ancis Bacon, a founder of the scientific method, died in 1626 of pneumonia after
stuffing a chicken with snow to see if cold would preserve it.
15 For organs to form during embryonic development, some cells must commit suici
de. Without such programmed cell death, we would all be born with webbed feet, l
ike ducks.
16 Waiting to exhale: In 1907 a Massachusetts doctor conducted an experiment wit
h a specially designed deathbed and reported that the human body lost 21 grams u
pon dying. This has been widely held as fact ever since. Its not.
17 Buried alive: In 19th-century Europe there was so much anecdotal evidence tha
t living people were mistakenly declared dead that cadavers were laid out in hosp
itals for the dead while attendants awaited signs of putrefaction.
18 Eighty percent of people in the United States die in a hospital.
19 If you cant make it here . . . More people commit suicide in New York City tha
n are murdered.
20 It is estimated that 100 billion people have died since humans began.
The honeybee kills more people world-wide than all the poisonous snakes combined
.
http://www.corsinet.com/trivia/
Things You May Not Have Known
1. Money isn't made out of paper, it's made out of cotton.
2. The 57 on Heinz ketchup bottle represents the number of varieties of pickle t
he company once had.
3. A rat can last longer without water than a camel.
4. Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks, otherwise i
t will digest itself.
5. The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.
6. The dot over the letter 'i' is called a "tittle."
7. A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down contin
ually from the bottom of the glass to the top.
8. Susan Lucci is the daughter of Phyllis Diller.
9. A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.
10. A duck's quack doesn't echo. No one knows why.
11. A "2x4" actually measures 1-1/2" x 3-1/2"
12. 40% of McDonald's profits come from the sales of Happy Meals.
13. Every person has a unique tongue print.
14. The 'spot' on 7UP comes from its inventor who had red eyes. He was albino.
15. 315 entries in Webster's 1996 Dictionary were misspelled.
16. During the chariot scene in 'Ben Hur' a small red car can be seen in the dis
tance.
17. On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily.
18. John Wilkes Booth's brother once saved the life of Abraham Lincoln's son.
19. Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister.
20. Chocolate kills dogs! True, chocolate effects a dogs heart and nervous syste
m, a few ounces enough to kill a small sized dog.
21. Daniel Boone detested coonskin caps.
22. Playing cards were issued to British pilots in WWII. If captured, they could
be soaked in water and unfolded to reveal a map for escape.
23. Most lipstick contains fish scales.
24. Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark's stomach
from underneath, causing the shark to explode.
25. Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants.
26. Dr. Seuss actually pronounced Seuss such that it sounded like Sue-ice.
27. Ketchup was sold in the 1830s as medicine.
28. Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the s
ame time.
29. During the California Gold Rush of 1849 miners sent their laundry to Honolul
u for washing and pressing. Due to the extremely high costs in California during
these boom years it was deemed more feasible to send the shirts to Hawaii for s
ervicing.
30. American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each s
alad served in first class.
31. Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made
of wood.
32. The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a ga
me of chess is 318,979,564,000.
33. Upper and lower case letters are named 'upper' and lower, because in the tim
e when all original print had to be set in individual letters, the 'upper case'
letters were stored in the case on top of the case that stored the smaller, 'low
er case' letters.
34. There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.
35. There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with: orange, purple, and si
lver!
36. The numbers '172' can be found on the back of the U.S. $5 dollar bill in the
bushes at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.
37. The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan, there was never a recorde
d Wendy before!
38. The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II kill
ed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
39. There are four cars and eleven light posts on the back of a $10 dollar bill.
40. Leonardo Da Vinci invented scissors, also, it took him 10 years to paint Mon
a Lisa's lips.
41. If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go ma
d and sting itself to death.
42. Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to SLOW a film down so you coul
d see his moves. That's the opposite of the norm.
43. If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. Yo
u also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make chan
ge for a dollar.
44. The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen's 'Born in the USA'
45. The mask used by Michael Myers in the original Halloween was actually a Capt
ain Kirk mask painted white.
46. The original name for the butterfly was 'flutterby'!
47. The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated t
hat you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
48. The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automo
biles. At that time the most known player on the market was the Victrola, so the
y called themselves Motorola.
49. Roses MAY Be red, but violets ARE, indeed, violet.
50. By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you can't sink in quicks
and.
51. Casey Kasem is the voice of Shaggy on Scooby-Doo.
52. Celery has negative calories! It takes more calories to eat a piece of celer
y than the celery has in it to begin with.
53. Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look alike contest
.
54. In Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift described the two moons of Mars, Phobos
and Deimos, giving their exact size and speeds of rotation. He did this more th
an 100 years before either moon was discovered.
55. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying!
56. Sherlock Holmes NEVER said Elementary, my dear Watson.
57. An old law in Bellingham, Wash., made it illegal for a woman to take more th
an 3 steps backwards while dancing.
58. Sharon Stone was the first Star Search spokesmodel.
59. The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
60. Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stol
en from Public Libraries.
61. Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because pa
ssing wind in a spacesuit damages them.
62. Back in the mid to late 80's, an IBM compatible computer wasn't considered a
hundred percent compatible unless it could run Microsoft's Flight Simulator.
63. Bats always turn left when exiting a cave!
y".