| Strange Facts |
| It is impossible to lick your elbow. A crocodile can't stick its tongue out. A shrimp's heart is in its head. When you sneeze, your heart stops for a millisecond. It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky. A pregnant goldfish is called a twit. Between 1937 and 1945 Heinz produced a version of Alphagetti Spaghetti especially for the German market that consisted solely of little pasta swastikas. Rats and horses can't vomit. Wearing headphones for just an hour will increse the bacteria in your ear by 700 times. If the government has no knowledge of aliens, then why does Title 14, Section 1211 of the Code of Federal Regulations, implemented on July 16, 1969, make it illegal for US citizens to have any contact with extraterrestrials or their vehicles? In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere. A duck's echo doesn't echo and no one knows why. In the course of an average lifetime you will, while sleeping, eat 70 assorted insects and 10 spiders. Most lipstick contains fish scales. I bet you tried to lick your elbow, didn't you? The "save" icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk with the shutter on backwards. The letter combination "ough" can be pronounced nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough he coughed and hiccoughed." The verb "cleave" is the only English word with two synonyms that are antonyms of each other: adhere and seperate. The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is "uncopyrightable." "Facetious," "abstemious," and "arsenious" contain all the vowels in the correct order. Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian coat of arms for that reason. Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs have only about ten. The word "checkmate" in chess cone from the Persian phrase "Shah mat," which means, "the king is dead." "Pinocchio" is Italian for "pine head." Camel's milk does not curdle. An animal epidemic is called an epizootic. Murphy's Oil Soap is the chemical most commonly used to clean elephants. The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used. Blueberry Jelly Belly jelly beans were created especially for Ronald Reagan. All porcupines float in water. Cat's urine glows under a blacklight. If you bring a raccoo's head to the Henniker, New Hampshire town hall, you are entitled to receive $.10 from the town. The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days when the engires were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled ont he ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases. Non-dairy creamer is flammable. The airplane Buddy Holly died in was called "American Pie," thus the name of the Don McLean song. The only nation whose name begins with "A" but doesn't end in an "A" is Afghanistan. When opossums are "playing possum," they are not playing; they actually pass out from sheer terror. The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building. If you toss a penny 1,000 times, it will not be heads 500 times, but more like 495 times. The heads picture weighs more so it ends up in the bottom more. The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the longest word in the English language is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. The only other word with the same amount of letters is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, and it's plural. Hydroxydesoxycorticosterone and hydroxydeoxycorticosterones are the largest anagrams. An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain. Ben and Jerry's sends the waste from making ice cream to local pig farmers to use as feed. Pigs love the stuff, except for one flavor: Mint Oreo. Al Capone's business card said he was a furniture dealer. Wilma Flintstone's maiden name was Wilma Slaghoopal, and Betty Rubble's maiden name was Betty Jean McBricker. Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors. The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Ber the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life." The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb. "Stewardesses" is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand. The Baby Ruth candy bar was actually named after Grover Cleveland's baby daughter, Ruth. A group of unicorns is called a blessing. Twelve or more cows are known as a flink. A group of frogs is called an army. A group of rhinos is called a crash. A group of kangaroos is called a mob. A group of ravens is called a murder. A group of officers is called a mess. A group of larks is called an exaltation. A group of owls is called a parliament. Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie. The phrase "sleep tight" derives from the fact that early mattresses were filled with straw and held up with rope stretched across a bed frame. A "tight" sleep was a comfortable sleep. "Three dog night" came about because on especially cold nights the nomadic Australic Aboriginal people needed three dogs (dingoes actually) to keep from freezing. Gilligan of Gilligan's Island had a first name that was only used once, on the never-aired pilot show. His first name was Willy. The Skipper's real name was Jonas Grumby. It was mentioned once in the first episode on their radio's newscast about the wreck. In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak. Ivory bar soap floating was a mistake. They had been over-mixing the soap formula, causing excess air bubbles that made it float. Studies show that if a cat falls off the seventh floor of a building, it has about thirty percent less chance of surviving than a cat that falls off the twentieth floor. It supposedly takes about eight floors for the cat the realize what is going on, relax, and correct itself. The saying "It's so cold out there it could freeze the balls off a brass monkey" came from when they had old cannons like ones used in the Civil War. The cannonballs were stacked in a pyramid formation, called a brass monkey. When it got extremely cold outside, they would crack and break off... thus the saying. Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself. The Sanskrit word for "war" mean "desire for more cows." 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321 When there is a statue of a person on a horse, if both the horse's front legs are in the air the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes. (editor's note: If the rider's head is up the horse's rear end, the rider died a politician.) No word in the English language rhymes with "month," "orange," "silver," and "purple." Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn down their houses... hence the expression "to get fired." Canada is a Native American word meaning "Big Village." |