USELESS FACTS

Men are 6 times more likely to be struck by lighting than women

It is estimated that millions of trees in the world are accidentally planted by squirrels

who bury nuts and then forget where they hid them

Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a novel, "Gadsby", which contains over 50,000 words -- none

of them with the letter E

Of all the words in the English language, the word set has the most definitions

A toothpick is the object most often choked on by Americans

Every 45 seconds, a house catches on fire in the United States

The sun is 330,330 times larger than the earth

The most used letter in the English alphabet is 'E', and 'Q' is the least used

There are more than 50,000 earthquakes throughout the world every year

The original name for the butterfly was 'flutterby'

Dogs and cats, like humans, are either right of left handed... or is that paws?

The opposite sides of a dice cube always add up to seven

Nose prints are used to identify dogs, just like humans use fingerprints

Bulls are colorblind, therefore will usually charge at a matador's waving cape no matter what

color it is -- be it red or neon yellow

Apples are more efficient than caffeine in keeping people awake in the mornings

Smelling bananas and/or green apples (smelling, not eating) can help you lose weight

A hard working adult sweats up to 4 gallons per day. Most of the sweat evaporates before a

person realizes it's there, though

The average ice berg weighs 20,000,000 tons

The poison-arrow frog has enough poison to kill about 2,200 people

A lump of pure gold the size of a matchbox can be flattened into a sheet the size of a tennis

court

After eating, a housefly regurgitates its food and then eats it again

The electric chair was invented by a dentist

Windmills always turn counter-clockwise. Except for the windmills in Ireland

Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand

The placement of a donkey's eyes in its' heads enables it to see all four feet at all times

Ants stretch when they wake up in the morning

Human teeth are almost as hard as rocks

A mole can dig a tunnel 300 feet long in just one night

Ancient Egyptians slept on pillows made of stone

A hippo can open its mouth wide enough to fit a 4 foot tall child inside

A quarter has 119 grooves on its edge, a dime has one less groove

A hummingbird weighs less than a penny

Until 1796, there was a state in the United States called Franklin. Today it is known as

Tennessee

The Earth weighs around 6,588,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons

A cockroach can live several weeks with its head cut off

Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie

The average person has over 1,460 dreams a year

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

It's against the law to burp, or sneeze in a church in Omaha, Nebraska

You're born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult, you only have 206

Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete

Over 1000 birds a year die from smashing into windows

Your heart beats over 100,000 times a day

Thomas Edison, lightbulb inventor, was afraid of the dark

During your lifetime, you'll eat about 60,000 pounds of food, that's the weight of about 6

elephants

Some ribbon worms will eat themselves if they cant find any food

Dolphins sleep with one eye open

The worlds oldest piece of chewing gum is 9000 years old

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

There are more plastic flamingos in the U.$.A, than real ones

About 3000 years ago, most Egyptians died by the time they were 30

More people use blue toothbrushes, than red ones

A sneeze travels out your mouth at over 100 m.p.h. (160km/h)

Your ribs move about 5 million times a year, everytime you breathe

In the White House, there are 13,092 knives, forks and spoons

Slugs have 4 noses

Recycling one glass jar, saves enough energy to watch T.V for 3 hours

Lightning strikes about 6,000 times per minute on this planet

Owls are the only birds who can see the color blue

It's against the law to slam your car door in Switzerland

There wasn't a single pony in the Pony Express, just horses

Honeybees have hair on their eyes

Eskimo ice cream is neither icy, or creamy

A jellyfish is 95 percent water

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

The katydid bug hears through holes in its hind legs

A company in Taiwan makes dinnerware out of wheat, so you can eat your plate

More Monopoly money is printed in a year, than real money printed throughout the world

The starfish is one of the only animals who can turn it's stomach inside-out

The elephant is the only mammal that can't jump

The penguin is the only bird who can swim, but not fly

Q is the only letter in the alphabet that does not appear in the name of any of the United

States

One quarter of the bones in your body, are in your feet

America once issued a 5-cent bill

You'll eat about 35,000 cookies in a lifetime

Here are some people, with weird names. This is true, no joke

Ure A. Pigg (Portland, Oregon)

Ima Hogg (Houston, Texas)

Ima June Bugg (Chicago, IL)

Eura Fisch (Charlotte N.C)

Ima Fisch (Charlotte N.C)

menna pause (Indianapolis,indiana)

Serious Misconduct (Welwyn, England)

General Error (Pueblo, Colorado)

Dr. Safety First (Tulsa, Oaklahoma)

Pearl Harbor (Birmingham, Alabama)

Honor Roll (Birmingham, Alabama)

E. Pluribus Eubanks (San Francisco, CA)

Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different

There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with: orange, purple, and silver

Babe Ruth wore a cabbage leaf under is cap to keep him cool! He changed it every 2

innings

Fortune cookies were actually invented in America, in 1918, by Charles Jung

A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 69 years

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

Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying

Here are some interesting numbers to look at

166,875,000,000 pieces of mail are delivered each year in the U.S

1,525,000,000 miles of telephone wire a strung across the U.S

123,000,000 cars are being driven down the U.S's highways

85,000,000 tons of paper are used each year in the U.S

56,000,000 people go to Major League baseball each year

Bats always turn left when exiting a cave

The praying mantis is the only insect that can turn its head

In Tokyo, they sell toupees for dogs

Dogs and cats consume almost $7 billion worth of pet food a year

Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails

You blink about 84,000,000 times a year

Baby robins eat 14 feet of earthworms every day

In England, in the 1880's, "Pants" was considered a dirty word

Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin

The blesbok, a South African antelope, is almost the same color as grapejuice

The average person laughs 15 times a day

Dogs can hear sounds that you cant

In every deck of cards the King of Hearts is sticking his sword through his head. That's

why he's often called the "Suicide King"

Pluto, the astrological sign for death, was directly above Dallas, Texas when JFK was

born.

The Titanic had four smokestacks. Only three worked, but it is good luck to have four so

they built one for show.

Bowerbirds of Australia and New Guinea decorate their courting grounds with everything

from beetle wings to car keys

Since 1600, 109 species and subspecies of birds have become extinct

The letter J does not appear anywhere on the periodic table of the elements

The cells which make up the antlers of a moose are the fastest growing animal cells in

nature

An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain

The King of Hearts is the only king without a moustache

A Boeing 747's wingspan is longer than the Wright brothers' first flight

The oldest Whiskey distillery in the world is in Ireland and started distilling in 1657

You can tell a girl crab from a boy crab by their stomachs. A girl has a beehive and a boy

has a lighthouse

The pH of cow's milk is 6

The world's smallest mammal is the bumblebee bat of Thailand, weighing less than a

penny

The two-foot long bird called a Kea that lives in New Zealand likes to eat the strips of

rubber around car windows

It would take a one kilogram weight one hour to fall to the bottom of the Marianas

Trench, the deepest part of the ocean (35,839 feet)

The billionth digit of pi is 9

Women blink nearly twice as much as men

Shannon Hoon, the now-dead lead singer of the group Blind Melon was a back-up singer

for Guns N' Roses on their Use Your Illusion 1 CD

Melanie Griffith's mother is actress Tippi Hendren, best known for her lead role in Alfred

Hitchcock's The Birds

A bowling pin need only tilt 7.5 degrees in order to fall down

You should not eat a crawfish with a straight tail. It was dead before it was cooked

The last Playboy centerfold to have staples was published in 1985. Venice Kong was the

model

The national anthem of the Netherlands (Het Wilhelmus) is the oldest national anthem in

the world. The music appeared in 1572, the lyrics in 1590

The Japanese anthem has the oldest lyrics/text from the ninth century, but the music is

from 1880

142857 is a cyclic number, the numbers of which always appear in the same order but

rotated around when multipled by any number from 1 to 6. 142857 * 2 = 285714

142857 * 3 = 428571, 142857 * 4 = 571428, 142857 * 5 = 714285

142857 * 6 = 857142

King Kong is the first movie to have its sequel (Son of Kong) released the same year

(1933)

Look at the number four on a clock face that uses Roman numerals. If the clock is made

correctly then the Roman numeral four is wrong. The standard and correct way to write

the Roman numeral four is "IV," but the traditional way to show it on a clock face is "IIII."

Legend has it that a clock was made for a British king. When he saw the clock he mis-

informedly corrected the clock maker who re-did the clock face to show a "IIII" instead

of an "IV" thus not risking offending the king. Other clock makers followed suit so as not

to embarass the king. Now it is the traditional way to make clocks

The distance between an alligator's eyes, in inches, is directly proportional to the length of

the alligator, in feet

All Hebrew orignating names that end with the letters "el" have something to do with God

"Toki doki kuruma de kayotte imasu" means "Sometimes I commute by car." in Japanese

The Eygptian god of the moon and knowledge, Thoth, has the head of an ibis

Tweety used to be a baby bird without feathers until the censors made him have feathers

because he "looked naked."

In an episode of The Simpsons, Sideshow Bob's Criminal Number is 24601, the same as

the Criminal number of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables

More money is printed daily for the Monopoly game than by the U.S. Treasury

The only continent without reptiles or snakes is Antarctica

It is possible to lead a cow upstairs but not downstairs, because a cows' knees can't bend

properly to walk back down

A golden razor removed from King Tut's Tomb was still sharp enough to be used

You can make a glass of apple cider with three apples

All gondolas in Venice, Italy must be painted black, unless they belong to a high official

The word "karate" means "empty hand."

A standard grave is 7'8" x 3'2" x 6"

There is a city called Rome on every continent

More Hollywood films have been made about boxing than about any other sport

John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln in a theatre and was found in a warehouse. Lee Harvey

Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and was found in a theatre

Dismas and Gestas were the names of the two thieves crucified with Jesus

Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand

It takes forty minutes to hard boil an ostrich egg

There are 2,598,960 five-card hands possible in a 52-card deck of cards

There are 1,929,770,126,028,800 different color combinations possible on a Rubik's Cube

If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne, it will keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom

Kermit the Frog is left handed

Drinking water after eating reduces the acid in your mouth by 61 percent

The cheetah is the only cat in the world that can't retract it's claws

It's rumored that sucking on a copper penny will cause a breath- alyzer to read 0

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

The Roman numerals for 1666 are as follows: MDCLXVI

(1000+500+100+50+10+5+1.) This year is famous as being the one time in history when

the date is written with all of the Roman numerals from highest value to the lowest value

The 16th century astronomer Tycho Brahe lost his nose in a duel with one of his students

over a mathematical computation. He wore a silver replacement nose for the rest of his

life

The most common name in Italy is Mario Rossi

Both Esther and Song of Solomon do not mention the word God

The "save" icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutter on backwards

Shirley Temple always had 56 curls in her hair

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

The only member of the band ZZ Top without a beard has the last name Beard

Vincent Van Gogh sold exactly one painting while he was alive, Red Vineyard at Arles

It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open

"John has a long moustache" was the coded-signal used by the French Resistance in WWII

to mobilize their forces once the Allies had landed on the Normandy beaches

The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world

Moon was Buzz Aldrin's mother's maiden name. (Buzz Aldrin was the second man on the moon in 1969)

Human birth control pills work on gorillas

Top English soccer club Liverpool were formed because their local enemies, Everton,

couldn't pay the rent for their stadium. Therefore Liverpool took over at the stadium (Anfield)

and became England's top soccer team ever

Seoul, the South Korean capital, just means "the capital" in the Korean language

The letters KGB stand for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti

The only bone not broken so far during any ski accident is one located in the inner ear

Elvis had a twin brother named Jesse Garon, who died at birth, which is why Elvis' middle name

was spelled Aron; in honor of his brother

Elton John's real name is Reginald Dwight

Elton comes from Elton Dean, a Bluesology sax player. John comesfrom Long John Baldry,

founder of Blues Inc. They were the first electric white blues band ever seen in England--1961

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

When a female horse and male donkey mate, the offspring is called a mule, but when a

male horse and female donkey mate, the offspring is called a hinny

The growth rate of some bamboo plants can reach three feet (91.44 cm) per day

Marijuana is Spanish for 'Mary Jane.'

Don MacLean's song "American Pie" was written about Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and

Ritchie Valens. All three were on the same plane that crashed

The Soviet Sukhoi-34 is the first strike fighter with a toilet in it

The longest English word that can be typed using the top row of a typewriter (allowing

multiple uses of letters) is 'typewriter.'

The native tribe of Tierra del Fuego has a language so guttural it cannot have an alphabet

AM and PM stand for "Ante-Meridian" and "Post-Meridian," respectively, and A.D. actually

stands for "Anno Domini" rather than "After Death."

To "testify" was based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement made by

swearing on their testicles

A whale's penis is called a dork

A winged penis was the city symbol of Pompeii, the ancient Roman resort town destroyed

by Mt. Vesuvius eruption

Starfish don't have brains

Shrimps' hearts are in their heads

The slogan on New Hampshire license plates is 'Live Free or Die'. These license plates are

manufactured by prisoners in the state prison in Concord

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 international telphone dialing code for Antarctica is 672

The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. The only other word with the same amount

of letters is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, its plural

Alfred Hitchcock didn't have a belly button. It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery

Bob Dylan's real name is Robert Zimmerman

Andy Warhol created the Rolling Stone's emblem depicting the big tongue. It first appeared on

the cover of the 'Sticky Fingers' album

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr were the two left-handed Beatles

Only three angels are mentioned by name in the Bible: Gabriel, Michael, and Lucifer

Compact discs read from the inside to the outside edge, the reverse of how a record works