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•
The word 'News' is actually an acronym standing
for the 4 cardinal compass points - North, East,
West, and South!
• The ridges on the sides of coins are called
'reeding' or 'milling'.
• The ball on top of a flagpole is called the
'truck'.
• The side of a hammer is a 'cheek'.
• The loop on a belt that holds the loose end
is called a 'keeper'.
• The 'glair' is the white or clear
part of an egg. The word glair comes from
the Latin clarus, meaning 'clear'.
• 'Corduroy'comes from the French, 'cord
du roi'or 'cloth of the king.'
• The plastic or metal sleeves at the end of
shoelaces are called 'aglets'.
• The white part of your fingernail is called
the 'lunula'.
• The two lines that connect your top lip to
the bottom of your nose are known as the 'philtrum'. |
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•
Fifteen people are known to have been crushed to
death tilting vending machines towards them in the
hope of a free can of soda.
• In 1992, 55,142 people were injured by jewelry.
In the next seven days, 800 more Americans will
be injured by their jewelry (this isn't a threat,
it's just the facts).
• The average person spends three years of
his or her life on the toilet.
• The odds of being killed by falling out of
bed are one in two million.
• Hot water weighs more than cold water.
• Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
• There were 43,687 toilet related accidents
in the United States in 1996.
• Women end up digesting most of the lipstick
they apply.
• Only 1 person in 2 billion will live to be
116.
• One in 500 humans has one blue eye and one
brown eye. . |
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•
The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle.
• Colgate faced a big obstacle marketing toothpaste
in Spanish speaking countries. Colgate translates
into the command "go hang yourself."
• When Coca-Cola began to be sold in China,
they used characters that would sound like "Coca-Cola"
when spoken. Unfortunately, what they turned out
to mean was "Bite the wax tadpole".
•The symbol on the 'pound' key (#) is called
an octothorpe.
• The WD in WD-40 stands for Water Displacer.
• The abbreviation for 1 pound, lb., comes
from the astrological sign Libra, meaning balance.
• To 'testify' was based on men in the
Roman court swearing to a statement made by swearing
on their testicles..
• The ZIP in Zip-code stands for 'Zoning Improvement
Plan.'
• Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid
of their unwanted people without killing them used
to burn their houses down - hence the expression
"to get fired."
• The word 'Checkmate' in chess comes from
the Persian phrase 'Shah Mat,' which means,
'the King is dead' |
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•
Cat's urine glows under a black light.
• Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds,
dogs only have about ten.
• A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
• Cats purr at the same frequency as an idling
diesel engine, about 26 cycles per second.
• A cat has a total of 24 whiskers, 4 rows
of whiskers on each side. The upper two rows can
move independently of the bottom two rows. A cat
uses its whiskers for measuring distances.
• Cats lose almost as much fluid in the saliva
while grooming themselves as they do through urination.
• A cat can jump 5 times as high as it is tall.
• When a domestic cat goes after mice, about
1 pounce in 3 results in a catch.
• Purring does not always indicate that a cat
is happy and healthy - some cats will purr loudly
when they are terrified or in pain.
• Cats have a special scent organ located in
the roof of their mouth, called the Jacobson's organ.
It analyzes smells - and is the reason why you will
sometimes see your cat "sneer" when they
encounter a strong odor. |
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• John
Smoltz burned his chest while ironing a shirt that
he was wearing.
• Wade
Boggs hurt his back when he lost his balance while
trying to put on cowboy boots.
• Odiebe
McDowell cut his finger buttering a roll at the
Texas Ranger's welcome home luncheon.
• Ricky
Bones hurt his lower back getting out of a chair
while watching TV in the clubhouse.
• Kevin
Mitchell strained a muscle while vomiting.
• George
Brett hit his foot on a chair and broke his toe
while running from the kitchen to the TV to see
Bill Buckner hit.
• Rick
Honeycutt injured his wrist while flicking sunflower
seeds in the dugout.
• Chris
Brown injured his eye by sleeping on his eye wrong.
• Phil
Niekro injured his hand shaking hands too hard.
• Nolan
Ryan was bitten by a coyote. |
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• One
dust-covered General Electric 2 Line Phone.
• One
round ceramic incense burner with lotus leaf design.
• One worn
copy of John Stewart Collis' The Worm Forgives
The Plough.
• Two
stuffed animals; a killer whale and a dolphin
tentatively named Wally and Dolly.
• Two
different screws of indeterminate origin.
• One
crumpled old lottery ticket with the losing numbers
11, 13, 16, 19, 21, 46, and 47. Dated 2002-08-16.
• One
photocopy of a UPS shipping label from 19 Nov
01. The package in question was the first of two
and weighed 32 lbs.
• One
subscription card for a British Magazine named
Q offering a CD "+ at least six issues =
£19 ... seven if you're lucky." I don't
know if this is a good deal and I don't think
they're sure either.
• One
scrap of paper with the following written in longhand:
medium thin
crust/Well done
pep.mush.
small thin
crust/well done
black olives, rst. peppers,
sundried tomatoes, grilled zuc.
24.80
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• One
cassette (no case) of the album Joe Strummer Earthquake
Weather from 1989. It is no longer available
and I don't know where it came from.
|
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•
111,111,111
x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
• On
average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint
pens every year.
• It
takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather
for a year's supply of footballs.
• Every
time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of
a calorie.
• The
longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds.
• Only
one person in two billion will live to be 116 or
older.
• A
cockroach can live for 3 days after you behead it.
• A
pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.
• A
'jiffy' is an actual unit of time - 1/100th of a
second.
• 101
Dalmatians and Peter Pan are the only 2 Disney cartoon
features with both parents that are present and
don't die during the course of the movie. |
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•
Calligula's
last words were "I'm still alive"
• The
teeth of many of the dead from the Battle of Waterloo
were used to make dentures
• Edith
Piaf's funeral was so overcrowded that several mourners
fell into the open grave
• Discounting
Icarus, Pilatre de Rozier was the first ever air
fatality on June 15, 1785.
• Author
Thomas Hardy's body was buried in Westminster Abbey,
but his heart was removed to be buried in his beloved
Wessex - except, unfortunately, his cat got hold
of it and ran away with it.
• When
he died in 1955, Albert Einstein's last words were
lost to posterity; he spoke them in German, and
as he was in America, no-one understood them
• The
Greek dramatist Aeschylus was killed by an eagle
dropping a tortoise on his head.
• Attila
the Hun drank himself to death at his own wedding
feast
• In
1904 the Russian Navy shot and destroyed most of
the Hull fishing fleet off Dogger Bank, mistaking
them for Japanese torpedo boats
• According
to parish records, Thomas Carn was born in Shoreditch
in 1381, and was 207 years old when he died, making
him the world's oldest recorded man. Not quite so
impressive was Thomas Parr from Shrewsbury, who
is said to have lived for 152 years. Mind you, he
did get his wife pregnant when he was 122 years
old. |
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•
The
6 pieces in the game of Monopoly (top hat, iron
etc.) were originally taken from a charm bracelet
belonging to the inventor's wife.
• In
the game Monopoly, Marvin Gardens is the only property
that is not in Atlantic City. It is located in Margate,
and in the game, it's misspelled - it's really Marven
Gardens.
• The
picture of the Queen of Hearts in a pack of cards
is of Elizabeth of York, mother of Henry VIII.
• The
word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the
Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which means
"the king is dead."
• In
2000, for the third consecutive year, an astonishing
35 percentof all Americans identified computer and
video games as the mostfun entertainment activity.
A distant second was watching televi-sion (18 percent),
then surfing the Internet (15 percent), readingbooks
(13 percent), and going out to the movies (11 percent).
• Each
king in a deck of playing cards represents a great
king from history: Spades - King David; Clubs -
Alexander the Great; Hearts - Charlemagne; and Diamonds
- Julius Caesar. There used to be 56 cards in a
pack, with Knights ranking between Queens and Knaves.
• A
bowling pin only has to tilt 7.5 degrees in order
to fall down.
• The
original game of "Monopoly" was circular.
• More
money is printed daily for the game Monopoly than
money printed by the U.S. Treasury.
• There
are 2,598,960 five card hands possible in a 52 card
deck |
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•
Truman Capote kept as many as 500 pencils sharpened
before he began writing. He wrote his first draft
on yellow paper; his second, on white; and his third
and final one, on yellow again.
• George Sand wrote all her novels at night.
• Henry David Thoreau often wrote in the dark
on a piece of paper he kept under his pillow whenever
he was suffering from insomnia.
• Joan Didion slept in the same room as her
books in order to get closer to them and to enable
her to write them better.
• Henrik Ibsen started writing at 4 A.M. every
day.
• Jane Austen was so private about her work
that she usually wrote on tiny pieces of paper that
could be hidden under blotters if anybody walked
into the room during the heat of her inspiration.
• E.M. Forester liked to all writing to happen
rather than approach it with a preordained blueprint.
As he put it himself, "How do I know what I
think unless I see what I say?"
• Edgar Allan Poe never sat down to write until
he had completely arranged his plot and characters
-- and even their manner of speaking. To facilitate
this, he paced the floor like an expectant father,
getting himself psyched up for his big moment.
• Katherine Anne Porter always wrote her last
lines first, claiming that if she didn't know how
a story ended she wouldn't know how to begin.
• Samual Pepys wrote in a private type of shorthand
that wasn't desiphered until 1825 -- more than a
century after his death. |
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•
Polar bears are left-handed.
• A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.
• The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds, that
makes the catfish rank #1 for animal having the
most taste buds.
• Cat's urine glows under a black light.
• An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
• Starfish haven't got brains.
• A snail can sleep for 3 years.
• Tigers have striped skin, not just striped
fur.
• A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
• A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours. |
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•
“Coffee” comes from the Latin form of
the genus Coffea, a member of the Rubiaceae family
which includes more than 500 genera and 6,000 species
of tropical trees and shrubs.
• The Arabs were the first, not only to cultivate
coffee but also to begin its trade. By the fifteenth
century, coffee was being grown in the Yemeni district
of Arabia and by the sixteenth century it was known
in Persia, Egypt, Syria and Turkey.
• Coffee was introduced to Constantinople by
the Ottoman Turks. The world's first coffee shop,
Kiv Han, opened there in 1475. Turkish law made
it legal for a woman to divorce her husband if he
failed to provide her with her daily quota of coffee.
• In 1714, the Mayor of Amsterdam presented
a gift of a young coffee plant to King Louis XIV
of France. The King ordered it to be planted in
the Royal Botanical Garden in Paris. In 1723, a
young naval officer, Gabriel de Clieu obtained a
seedling from the King’s plant. Despite an
arduous voyage - complete with horrendous weather,
a saboteur who tried to destroy the seedling and
a pirate attack - he managed to transport it safely
to Martinique. Once planted, the seedling thrived
and is credited with the spread of over 18 million
coffee trees on the island of Martinique in the
next 50 years. Eventually, 90 percent of the worlds
coffee would spread from this plant. With it being
the stock from which coffee trees throughout the
Caribbean, South and Central America originated.
• The first European coffee was sold in pharmacies
in 1615 as a medical remedy.
• All coffee is grown within 1,000 miles of
the equator, from the Tropic of Cancer in the north,
to the Tropic of Capricorn in the south.
• It takes 42 coffee beans to make an espresso.
• History has it that when coffee was first
introduced in Italy, Italian wine merchants, their
wine sales threatened by coffee, appealed to the
Pope to ban it. However, instead Pope Clementine
VIII requested that some coffee be brought to him
so he could try it. After smelling it, he liked
the aroma so much he tasted it and then proceeded
to baptize coffee and pronounce it a Christian beverage.
• The first soluble “instant” coffee
was invented by Japanese-American chemist Satori
Kato of Chicago in 1901. The first mass-produced
instant coffee wasn’t until 1906 however, when
George Constant Washington, an English chemist living
in Guatemala created his brand called Red E Coffee,
which was soon followed by dozens of others.
• Voltaire is rumoured to have had a 50 cup
a day coffee habit. And at one point during the
making of “Citizen Kane” Orson Wells had
to be taken to hospital (it was said) due to excessive
coffee consumption. |
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•
In 2003, the total number of languages in the world
was estimated to be 6,809.
• 90% of these languages are spoken by less
than 100,000 people.
• Between 200 and 150 languages are spoken
by more than a million people.
• There are 357 languages which have less than
50 speakers.
• The Cambap language (Central Cameroon) has
30 speakers; the Leco language (Bolivian Andes)
has about 20 speakers.
• A total of 46 languages have just a single
speaker.
• Unfortunately, with the onset of mass communications
(rapid flights, radio, television, telephone, the
internet), many of the smaller languages are in
real danger of extinction. With their passing, a
unique cultural way of looking at the world disappears
with them.
• Over the last 500 years 4.5% of the world's
described languages have disappeared. In North America,
52 of the 176 languages have become extinct since
1600. In Australia, 31 of the 235 languages have
gone.
• Even so, some countries and regions are still
rich in linguistic diversity. Mexico has 52 languages
spoken within its borders. The old USSR (Soviet
Union) had 100. Nigeria has over 400. The island
of Papua New Guinea has over 700, virtually a different
one in each valley.
• India has over 800 languages in several families
(Indo-European, Dravidian, Sino-Tibetan, Austro-Asiatic).. |
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• Clinton, Oklahoma,
has a law against masturbating while watching
two people having sex in a car.
• A law in Alexandria, Minnesota makes it
illegal for a husband to make love to his wife
if his breath smells like garlic, onions, or sardines.
• During lunch breaks in Carlsbad, New Mexico,
no couple should engage in a sexual act while
parked in their vehicle, unless their car has
curtains.
• In Nevada sex without a condom is considered
illegal.
• In Willowdale, Oregon, no man may curse
while having sex with his wife.
• In Bozeman, Montana, you can't perform
any sexual acts in the front yard of any home,
after sundown, and if you are nude.
• In the state of Washington there is a law
against having sex with a virgin under any circumstances.
(including the wedding night).
• In Connorsville, Wisconsin no man shall
shoot of a gun while his female partner is having
an orgasm.
• A Tremonton, Utah law states that no woman
is allowed to have sex with a man while riding
in an ambulance. In addition to normal charges,
the woman's name will be published in the local
newspaper. The man does not receive any punishment.
• If a police
officer in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, suspects a couple
is having sex inside a vehicle they must honk
their horn three times, and wait two minutes before
being allowed to approach the scene.
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•
After
Shabbos, you light your cigarette off the havdalah
candle.
• You're
shul is in a trailer on cinderblocks.
• You
wear a sheitle in the shape of a mullet.
• Your
mom sets you up on a shiduch date with your sister.
• Your
Shabbos suit was a blue light special at K-Mart.
• The
only area on your lawn that is mowed is the spot
where you burn your chametz.
• The
chazzan at your shul sings Kedusha to the tune of
"Freebird."
• A
tish just isn't a tish without a bug zapper.
• On
the Shalosh Regalim you make your pilgrimage to
the Jerry Springer Show.
• Your
Rabbi yells "Yee-Haw" during his sermon. |
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•
When
all else fails, switch from "Cheddar"
to "Jack."
• Don't
test your new vegetarian menu in Wisconsin.
• Never
underestimate the power of the words "daily
recommended allowance."
• No
food exists that can't be improved with bacon.
• Consumers
prefer zany, wacky animal characters in their commercials,
but not in their lunch.
• When
naming foods, use the letter 'Z' instead of 'S.'
• Add
salsa for "Mardi Gras" and green food
dye for "St. Patrick's Day," but never
the other way around.
• Give
up on the holy grail - the customer's actual food
will never match the picture on the wall.
• To
you it's packaging, to the FDA it's "fiber
content."
• You
can say "over five billion served" and
nobody ever asks "served what?" |
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•
No
word in the English language rhymes with month,
orange, silver or purple.
• The
sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the
lazy dog" uses every letter in the English
language.
• In
English, four is the only digit that has the same
number of letters as its value.
• "Go."
Is the shortest complete sentence in the English
language.
• A
coward was originally a boy who took care of cows.
• Bookkeeper
is the only word in the English language with three
consecutive double letters.
• It
is believed that Shakespeare was 46 around the time
that the King James Version of the Bible was written.
In Psalms 46, the 46th word from the first word
is shake and the 46th word from the last word is
spear.
• Polish
is the only word in the English language that when
capitalized is changed from a noun or a verb to
a nationality.
• The
longest word with no repetitions of letters is 'uncopyrightable'.
• The
most difficult tongue-twister is "The sixth
sick Sheik's sixth sheep's sick." |
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•
More
collect calls are made on Father's Day than any
other day of the year.
• If
you were to spell out numbers, you would have to
count all the way to 1,000 before you found one
that contained the letter A.
• "60
Minutes" is the only show on primetime television
without a theme song.
• More
people are conceived in December than any other
month.
• In
a statue of a person on a horse, if the horse has
both front legs in the air, the person died in battle.
If the horse has one front leg in the air, the person
died as a result of wounds received in battle. If
the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person
died of natural causes.
• The
cruise liner Queen Elizabeth II moves only six inches
for each gallon of diesel fuel that it burns.
• The
average number of people airborne over the US any
given hour: 61,000.
• Alaska
is the state with the highest percentage of people
who walk to work.
• Half
of all Americans live within 50 miles of their birthplace.
• Coca-Cola
was originally green. |
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•
Embedded
• Blog
• SARS
• Spam
• Taikonaut
• Bushism
• Allision
• Recall
• Middangeard
• Celibacy |
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•
Ground
Zero
• W.
(Dubya)
• Jihad
• God
• Anthrax
• Euro
• Wizard
• -stan
• Oprahization
• Foot-and-Mouth
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•
Fact:
Mosquitoes are attracted to the color blue twice
as much as to any other color.
• Fact:
The average human eats 8 spiders in their lifetime
at night.
• Fact:
Only female mosquitoes bite.
• Fact:
Every night, wasps bite into the stem of a plant,
lock their mandibles (jaws) into position, stretch
out at right angles to the stem, and, with legs
dangling, fall asleep.
• Fact:
Butterflies taste with their hind feet.
• Fact:
Ants stretch when they wake up. They also appear
to yawn in a very human manner before taking up
the tasks of the day.
• Fact:
The outdoor temperature can be estimated to within
several degrees by timing the chirps of a cricket.
It is done this way: count the number of chirps
in a 15-second period, and add 37 to the total.
The result will be very close to the actual Fahrenheit
temperature. This formula, however, only works in
warm weather. (Try it!)
• Fact:
If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion,
it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.
• Fact:
A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours
• Fact:
The housefly hums in the middle octave, key of F.
|
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•
The Earth spins at 1,000 mph but it travels through
space at an incredible 67,000 mph
• Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a hurricane three
times the size of planet Earth
• Uranus spins on its side as it orbits the
Sun
• Mars has the biggest volcano in the Solar
System, Olympus Mons - large enough to cover Spain,
and three times the height of Everest.
• Venus rotates backwards, as compared to all
the other planets
• Mercury can only be seen from the Earth at
twilight
• Saturn would float if you could find an ocean
big enough
• The Moon is 400 times closer to the Earth
than the Sun and exactly 400 times smaller
• Mercury's "day" - sunrise to sunrise
- is longer than its year
• 3 planets orbit the star Upsilon Andromedae,
44 light years away |
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•
In 1565 German-Swiss naturalist Conrad Gesner first
fabricated a writing instrument in which graphite,
then thought to be a type of lead, was inserted
into a wooden holder thus inventing the pencil.
• The thermometer was invented in 1607 by Galileo.
• Antonie van Leeuwenhoek developed the prototype
of the modern microscope in 1674.
• Dr. Edward Jenner first came up with the
idea of injecting a healthy person with a mild disease
called "cowpox" to protect them against
a much deadlier disease called “smallpox”
in 1796.
• American Joel Houghton invented the first
dishwasher in 1850.
• Alfred Nobel invented dynamite in 1866.
• The inventor of the zipper was Whitcomb L.
Judson, who came up with the fancy fastener to help
out a friend. On August 29, 1893, he patented his
new “hookless fastener.”
• The inventor of the first synthetic polymer
(later known as plastic) was Leo Baekeland. He called
his invention “Bakelite.”
• Bette Nesmith Graham a divorced single mother
invented "White Out” circa 1956.
• Joseph-Armand Bombardier patented the Ski-Doo
in 1959, originally christened the Ski-Dog, but
renamed because of a typographical error that Bombardier
decided not to change |
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•
The largest dinosaur ever discovered was Seismosaurus
who was over 100 feet long and weighed up to 80
tonnes.
• Monash University has named a new species
of dinosaur Qantassaurus after the Australian airline
Qantas.
• The now extinct woolly mammoth of Northern
Europe and Russia have been found in ever increasing
numbers deep frozen in remarkable condition. Some
of these bodies flesh, many of which have lain undesturbed
for tens of thousands of years, are still said to
be edible.
• Pterosaurs, which were winged cousins of
dinosaurs, were the first vertebrates to take to
the air. Also it had hollow bones, even thinner
for their size that most modern bird bones.
• Reptiles were responsible for such body part
innovations as fur, feathers, claws, differentiated
teeth, water impervious skin, water impervious eggs,
and the penis.
• Canadian paleontologists working along Hudson
Bay in northern Manitoba has discovered the world's
largest recorded complete fossil of a trilobite,
a many-legged, sea-dwelling animal that lived 445
million years ago. The giant creature is more than
70 cm long (about 28 inches), 70 percent larger
than the previous record holder.
• In 1822, Mary Ann Mantell of Sussex, England
became the first person in history to discover a
dinosaur fossil while correctly identifying it as
something that was a part of a large reptile; earlier
discoveries were identified as giant men, dragons,
and other such large, dead things. However, her
husband, Dr. Gideon Mantell, took credit for the
discovery and identified the teeth that she found
as part of an Iguanodon. Later, he wrongfully identified
a body part as a horn, which turned out to be part
of the creature's thumb.
• The horned dinosaur Torosaurus had the longest
skull of any land-living animal--it was 9 feet long.
• Stress fractures in some dinosaur vertebrae
may have been caused by the weight load of copulation.
• The over-the-top purple dinosaur Barney has
hit a LOT of raw nerves and sore spots over the
years. A Google search of the words die and Barney
yields 186,000 hits. A search for “die die
die” and Barney produces 1, 780 pages either
expressing or commenting upon that particular sentiment.
A “die die die die die die die die die die
Barney”search turns up 637 pages. “Kill
Barney”produces 2,400 hits, while the opposing
thought ”Don't kill Barney” doesn't get
a single Google vote. |
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Sure,
I could have been using all the energy I spent putting
this page together curing some disease or feeding starving
children instead of searching the net for weird top tens.
I'm not proud. Here are the...
Top Ten Reasons Why I Created This Page...from the
MHC satellite office in Toronto, ON |
•
Making
lists is fun.
• I
had some time on my hands.
• Everyone
loves Top Ten Lists.
• L
is asleep and left me to my own devices.
• Because
of you, I mean, you know you want it.
• Who
else is going to do it here at the Common?
• Give
me ten top reasons why this page doesn't belong here.
• The original page
was meant to be dedicated to my collection of tubers shaped
like the greatest
composers of the opera (including Puccini, Bizet,
and Verdi) but that went bust.
• The
page is almost complete so why stop now?.
• Why
let David Letterman have all the fun? |
Enjoy,
Paul
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