Believe it or not, these are true...
*The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five
must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in
times of war or other emergencies.
*The Boston University Bridge (on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston,
Massachusetts) is the only place in the world where a boat can sail under
a train driving under a car driving under an airplane.
*Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.
*Our eyes are always the same size from birth,but our nose and ears
neverstop growing.
*David Prowse, was the guy in the Darth Vader suit in Star Wars. He
spoke all of Vader's lines, and didn't know that he was going to be
dubbed over by James Earl Jones until he saw the screening of the movie.
*Many hamsters only blink one eye at a time.
*In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.
*February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full
moon.
*Montpelier, Vermont is the only U.S. state capital without a McDonalds.
*No word in the English language rhymes with month.
*The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each
gallon of diesel that it burns.
*There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.
*Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-decimal
category.
*Cat's urine glows under a black light.
*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.
*The first Ford cars had Dodge engines.
*Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.
*It takes about a half a gallon of water to cook macaroni, and about a
gallon to clean the pot.
*In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
*Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child
reaches 2-6 years of age.
*The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in
Colorado.
*Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
*If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have
$1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being
able to make change for a dollar.
*The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
*Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike
factory workers in Malaysia combined.
*No NFL team which plays it's home games in a domed stadium has ever won
a Superbowl.
*The first toilet ever seen on television was on Leave It To Beaver
*In the great fire of London in 1666 half of London was burnt down but
only 6 people were injured
*Lincoln Logs were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright's son.
*The only two days of the year in which there are no professional
sports games (MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL) are the day before and the day after
the
Major League All-Star Game.
*Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
*The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan.
How Specs Live Forever
The US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4
feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that
gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and
the US railroads were built by English expatriates. Why did the
English people build them like that? Because the first rail lines
were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways,
and that's the gauge they used.
Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people
who built
the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for
building wagons, which used that wheel spacing. Okay! Why did the
wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any
other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old, long
distance roads, because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts.
So who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance
roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of
their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts?
The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of
destroying their wagons, were first made by Roman war chariots.
Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome they were all
alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
Thus, we have the answer to the original questions. The United
State standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from
the original specification for an Imperial Roman army war
chariot.
Specs and Bureaucracies live forever. So, the next time you are
handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with
it,
you may be exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman chariots were
made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back-ends of two
war
horses.
The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time television
were Fred and Wilma Flintstone.
Coca-Cola was originally green.
Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the US Treasury.
It is possible to lead a cow upstairs but not downstairs.
Smartest dogs: (1) Scottish border collie; (2) Poodle; (3) Golden
retriever. Dumbest: Afghan hound.
Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters.
Men can read smaller print than women; women can hear better.
Amount American Airlines saved in 1987 by eliminating one olive from
each salad served first class: $40,000
City with the most Rolls Royces per capita: Hong Kong
State with the highest percentage of people who walk to work: Alaska
Percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28%
Percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38%
Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33
Average number of days a West German goes without washing his underwear: 7
Percentage of American men who say they would marry the same woman if
they had it to do all over again: 80%
Percentage of American women who say they'd marry the same man: 50%
Cost of raising a medium-size dog to the age of eleven: $6,400
Average number of people airborne over the US any given hour: 61,000.
Percentage of Americans who have visited Disneyland/Disney World: 70%
Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.
Only President to win a Pulitzer: John F. Kennedy for "Profiles in
Courage"
Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.
The youngest pope was 11 years old.
Iceland consumes more Coca-Cola per capita than any other nation.
First novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer.
A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.
In the 1940s, the FCC assigned television's Channel 1 to mobile
services (two-way radios in taxicabs, for instance) but did not re-number the
other channel assignments. That is why your TV set has channels 2 and up,
but no channel 1.
The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments
The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter
is uncopyrightable.
Hang On Snoopy is the official rock song of Ohio. [I thought the name
was "Sloopy"?]
Did you know that there are coffee flavored PEZ?
The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore
when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the
ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the "American Pie." (Thus the
name of the Don McLean song.)
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.
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.
111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
If a statue in the park of a person on a 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.
Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people
without killing them would burn their houses down - hence the expression
"to
get fired."
Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th,
John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but
the last signature wasn't added until 5 years later.
"I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English
language.
The term "the whole 9 yards" came from W.W.II fighter pilots in the
South Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber
machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being
loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a
target, it got "the whole 9 yards."
Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them
looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.
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.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.