Here are some useless facts that you may enjoy…
1. The longest one-syllable word in the English language is “screeched.”
2. On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament Building is an American flag.
3. barbie’s measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33.
4. All of the clocks in Pulp Fiction are stuck on 4:20.
5. No word in the English language rhymes with month.
6. A coat hanger is 44 inches long if straightened.
7. Canada is an Indian word meaning “Big Village”.
8. “Dreamt” is the only English word that ends in the letters “mt”.
9. The word ‘byte’ is a contraction of ‘by eight.’
10. The word ‘pixel’ is a contraction of either ‘picture cell’ or ‘picture element.’
11. Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-decimal cat.
12. Cats’ urine glows under a blacklight.
13. The average ear of corn has eight-hundred kernels arranged in sixteen rows.
14. The first Ford cars had Dodge engines.
15. Chrysler built B-29’s that bombed Japan, Mitsubishi built Zeros that tried to shoot them down. Both companies now build cars in a joint
plant call Diamond Star.
16. On the new hundred dollar bill the time on the clock tower of Independence Hall is 4:10.
17. All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill.
18. Almonds are members of the peach family.
19. If you add up the numbers 1-100 consecutively (1+2+3+4+5 etc) the total
is 5050.
20. The symbol on the “pound” key (#) is called an octothorpe.
21. The term “the whole 9 yards” came from WWII 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.”
22. The maximum weight for a golf ball is 1.62 oz.
23. The dot over the letter ‘i’ is called a tittle.
24. Duddley DoRight’s Horses name was “Horse.”
25. Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain was born on a day in 1835 when Haley’s Comet came into veiw. When He died in 1910, Haley’s Comet came into view again.
26. Ethernet is a registered trademark of Xerox, Unix is a registered trademark of AT&T.
27. The first hard drive available for the Apple had a capacity of 5megabytes.
28. In many cases, the amount of storage space on a recordable CD is measured in minutes. 74 minutes is about 650 megabytes, 63 minutes is
550 megabytes.
29. Charlie Brown’s father was a barber.
30. Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intraveinously.
31. Of the six men who made up the Three Stooges, three of them were real brothers. (Moe, Curly and Shemp.)
32. Ohio is listed as the 17th state in the U.S., but technically it is number 47. Until August 7, 1953, congress forgot to vote on a resolution to admit Ohio to the Union.
33. 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.
34. Only 1/3 of the people that can twitch their ears can twitch only one at a time.
35. The volume of the Earth’s moon is the same as the volume of the Pacific Ocean
36. Ingrown toenails are hereditary.
37. Winston Churchill was born in a ladies’ room during a dance.
38. The largest city in the United States with a one syllable name is Flint, Michigan.
39. The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
40. On the cartoon show ‘The Jetsons’, Jane is 33 years old and her daughter Judy is 15.
41. In Mel Brooks’ ‘Silent Movie,’ mime Marcel Marceau is the only person who has a speaking role.
42. Only humans and horses have hymens.
43. The word “set” has more definitions than any other word in the English language.
44. The state with the longest coastline in the US is Michigan.
45. We had four consecutive full moons making two blue moons in 1999. (January 2 and 31, March 2 and 31.) The only other time it happened
this century was in 1915. (January 1 and 31, March 1 and 31.)
46. Pulp Fiction cost $8 million to make – $5 million going to actor’s salaries.
47. Spot, Data’s cat on Star Trek: The Next Generation , was played by six different cats.
48. Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s fish was named Livingston.
49. The longest U.S. highway is route 6 starting in Cape Cod, Massachusetts going through 14 states, and ending in Bishop, California.
50. The ‘y’ in signs reading “ye olde..” is properly pronounced with a ‘th’ sound, not ‘y’. The “th” sound does not exist in Latin, so ancient Roman occupied (present day) England use the rune “thorn” to represent “th” sounds. With the advent of the printing press the character from the Roman alphabet which closest resembled thorn was the lower case “y”.
51. The number of the trash compactor in Star Wars (20th Century Fox, 1977) is 3263827.
52. “Underground” is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters “und.”
53. The international telphone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.
54. A full seven percent of the entire Irish barley crop goes to the production of Guinness beer.
55. If you toss a penny 10000 times, it will not be heads 5000 times, but more like 4950. The heads picture weighs more, so it ends up on the bottom.
56. The housefly hums in the middle octave, key of F.
57. Mr. Snuffleupagas’ first name was Alyoisus.
58. The little bags of netting for gas lanterns (called ‘mantles’) are radioactive-so much so that they will set off an alarm at a nuclear reactor.
59. In the movie “the Right Stuff” there is a scene where a government recruiter for the Mercury astronaut program (played by Jeff Goldblum)is in a bar at Muroc Dry Lake, California. His partner suggests Chuck Yeager as a good astronaut candidate. Jeff proceeds to badmouth Yeager claiming they need someone who went to college. During the conversation, the real Chuck Yeager is playing a bartender who is standing behind the recruiters eavesdropping. General Yeager is listed
low in the movie credits as ‘Fred.’
60. Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.
61. There are only four words in the English language which end in “-dous”: tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
62. The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
63. The only other word with the same amount of letters as #62 is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, its plural.
64. The longest place-name still in use is
Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu, a New Zealand hill.
65. 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.”
66. A cat has 32 muscles in each ear
67. An ostrich’s eye is bigger than it’s brain.
68. Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
69. After the Civil War the U.S. sued Great Britain for damages that were caused by them building ships for the Confederacy. We originally asked for $1 billion but settled on $25 Million.
70. There are 22 stars surrounding the mountain on the Paramount Pictures logo.
71. Deborah Winger did the voice of E.T.
72. There is a word in the English language with only one vowel, which occurs six times: Indivisibility.
73. In most advertisments, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.
74. The only Dutch word to contain eight consecutive consonants is ‘angstschreeuw’.
75. Alfred Hitchcock didn’t have a belly button. It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery.
76. The Mongol emperor Genghis Khan’s original name was Temujin.
77. The first word spoken by an ape in the movie Planet of the Apes was “Smile”.
78. Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order.
79. Geller and Huchra have made three-dimensional maps of the distrubution of galaxies. In each layer of the map some galaxies are grouped together in such a way that they resemble a human being.
80. Telly Savalas and Louis Armstrong died on their birthdays.
81. Donald Duck’s middle name is Fauntleroy.
82. Al Capone’s business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
83. The second longest word in the English language is “antidisestablishmenterianism”.
84. When two words are combined to form a single word (e.g., motor + hotel = motel, breakfast + lunch = brunch) the new word is called a
“portmanteau.”
85. Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was the physician who set the leg of Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth, and whose shame created the expression for ignominy, “His name is Mudd.”
86. The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint – no two lions have the same pattern of whiskers.
87. In 1969, the last Corvair was painted gold.
88. The real name of the “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” lady is Edith Fore.
89. Betsy Ross was born with a fully formed set of teeth.
90. Betsy Ross’s other contribution to the American Revolution, beside sewing the first American flag, was running a munitions factory in her basement.
91. The only real person to be a Pez head was Betsy Ross.
92. Steely Dan got their name from a sexual device depicted in the book ‘The Naked Lunch’.
93. Bob Dylan’s real name is Robert Zimmerman.
94. Wilma Flinestone’s maiden name was Wilma Slaghoopal, and Betty Rubble’s Maiden name was Betty Jean Mcbricker.
95. Lenny Kravitz’s mother played the part of “Helen” on “The Jeffersons.”
96. Grapes explode when you put them in the microwave.
97. A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
98. 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
99. The Ramses brand condom is named after the great phaoroh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.
100. There is a seven letter word in the English language that contains ten words without rearranging any of its letters, “therein”: the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, here, ere, therein, herein.
101. Canola oil is actually grapeseed oil but the name was changed in Canada for marketing reasons.
102. When the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers play football at home, the stadium becomes the state’s third largest city.
103. Duelling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
104. John Larroquette of “Night Court” and “The John Larroquette Show” was the narrator of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
105. A pig’s orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.
106. A pig’s penis is shaped like a corkscrew.
107. The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra’s “Its A Wonderful Life.”
108. A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.
109. A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
110. A quarter has 119 grooves around the edge.
111. A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
112. On an American one-dollar bill, there is an owl in the upper left-hand corner of the “1” encased in the “shield” and a spider hidden in the front upper right-hand corner.
113. No words in the English language rhyme with orange, silver or purple.
114. It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
115. “Evian” spelled backvards is naive.
116. The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.
117. Maine is the toothpick capital of the world.
118. It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws up it’s stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of it’s mouth. Then the frog uses it’s forearms to dig out all of the
stomach’s contents and then swallows the stomach back down again.
119. The A&W of root beer fame stands for Allen and Wright.
120. A baby eel is called an elver, a baby oyster is called a spat.
121. Bingo is the name of the dog on the Cracker Jack box.
122. Lake Nicaragua boasts the only fresh-water sharks in the entire world.
123. Charles de Gaulle’s final words were, “It hurts.”
124. There are four cars and ten lightposts on the back of a ten-dollar bill.
125. ABBA got their name by taking the first letter from each of their first names (Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny, Anni-frid.)
126. What five digit number, when multiplied by the number 4, is the same number with the digits in reverse order? 21978; 21978 x 4 = 87912.
127. It was illegal to sell ET dolls in France because there is a law against selling dolls without human faces.
128. In the 1983 film “JAWS 3D” the shark blows up. Some of the shark guts were the stuffed ET dolls being sold at the time.
129. Montana mountain goats will butt heads so hard their hooves fall off.
130. The Beatles song “Dear Prudence” was written about Mia Farrow’s sister, Prudence, when she wouldn’t come out and play with Mia and the Beatles
at a religious retreat in India.
131. Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully ripened cranberry can be dribbled like a basketball.
132. The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world for its size.
133. St. Paul, Minnesota was originally called Pigs Eye after a man who ran a saloon there.
134. 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.
135. Moon was Buzz Aldrin’s mother’s maiden name. (Buzz Aldrin was the second man on the moon in 1969.)
136. Who’s that playing the piano on the “Mad About You” theme? It’s Paul Reiser himself. And Greg Evigan sang the “My Two Dads” theme.
137. Kelsey Grammar sings and plays the piano for the theme song of Fraiser.
138. Alan Thicke, the father in the TV show Growing Pains wrote the theme songs for The Facts of Life and Diff’rent Strokes .
139. In 1963, baseball pitcher Gaylord Perry remarked, “They’ll put a man on the moon before I hit a home run.” On July 20, 1969, a few hours after
Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Gaylord Perry hit his first, and only, home run.
140. The Grateful Dead were once called The Warlocks.
141. 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.
142. The skipper’s real name on Gilligan’s Island is Jonas Grumby. It was mentioned once in the first episode on their radio’s newscast about
the wreck.
143. The Professor’s real name was Roy Hinkley, Mary Ann’s last name was Summers and Mrs. Howell’s maiden name was Wentworth.
144. The male gypsy moth can “smell” the virgin female gypsy moth from 1.8 miles away.
145. In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.
146. Reindeer milk has more fat than cow milk.
147. The “L.L.” in L.L. Bean stands for Leon Leonwood.
148. The original fifty cent piece in Australian decimal currency had around $2.00 worth of silver in it before it was replaced with a less expensive twelve sided coin.
149. The letters KGB stand for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti.
150. Alexander the Great was an epileptic.
151. The lead singer of The Knack, famous for “My Sharona,” and Jack Kevorkian’s lead defense attorney are brothers, Doug & Jeffrey Feiger.
152. The name for Oz in the “Wizard of Oz” was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence “Oz.”
153. The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
154. Elton John’s real name is Reginald Dwight. Elton comes from Elton Dean, a Bluesology sax player. John comes from Long John Baldry, founder of Blues Inc. They were the first electric white blues band ever seen in England–1961
155. 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.
156. Horses cannot vomit.
157. Rabbits cannot vomit.
158. S.O.S. doesn’t stand for “Save Our Ship”
or “Save Our Souls” — It was just chosen by an 1908 international conference on Morse Code because the letters S and O were easy to remember and just about anyone could key it and read it, S = dot dot dot, O = dash dash dash..
159. Pocahontas appeared on the back of the $20 bill in 1875.
160. 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 way to get more mules is to mate a male donkey with a female horse.
161. A donkey will sink in quicksand but a mule won’t.
162. Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.
163. Hugh “Ward Cleaver” Beaumont was an ordained minister.
164. The Old English word for “sneeze” is “fneosan.”
165. John Lennon’s first girlfriend was named Thelma Pickles.
166. A ‘jiffy’ is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
167. Woodpecker scalps, porpoise teeth and giraffe tails have all been used as money.
168. The Los Angeles Rams were the first U.S. football team to introduce emblems on their helmets.
169. The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
170. The average garden variety caterpillar has 248 muscles in its head.
171. Certain frogs can be frozen solid then thawed, and continue living.
172. Dartboards are made out of horsehairs.
173. One of the many Tarzans, Karmuela Searlel, was mauled to death on the set by a raging elephant.
174. Slinkys were invented by an airplane mechanic; he was playing with engine parts and realized the possible secondary use of one of the springs.
175. There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.
176. Octopi have gardens.
177. “Ever think you’re hearing something in a song, but they’re really singing something else? The word for mis-heard lyrics is ‘mondegreen,’ and it comes from a folk song in the ’50’s. The singer was actually singing “They slew the Earl of Morray and laid him on the green,” but this came off sounding like ‘They slew the Earl of Morray and Lady
Mondegreen.’”
178. Some biblical scholars believe that Aramaic (the language of the ancient Bible) did not contain an easy way to say “many things” and used
a term which has come down to us as 40. This means that when the bible — in many places – refers to “40 days,” they meant many days.
179. Napoleon constructed his battle plans in a sandbox.
180. ‘Strengths’ is the longest word in the English language with just one vowel.
181. ‘Stewardesses’ is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.
182. One of the longest English words that can be typed using the top row of a typewriter (allowing multiple uses of letters) is ‘typewriter.’
183. When a giraffe’s baby is born it falls from a height of six feet, normally without being hurt.
184. Virgina Woolf wrote all her books standing.
185. The pitches that Babe Ruth hit for his last-ever homerun and that Joe DiMaggio hit for his first-ever homerun where thrown by the same man.
186. To “testify” was based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement made by swearing on their testicles.
187. Stalin was only five feet, four inches tall.
188. Stalin’s left foot had webbed toes, and his left arm is noticably shorter than his right.
189. Tomb robbers believed that knocking Egyptian sarcophagi’s noses off would and therefore forstall curses.
190. The allele for six fingers and toes is dominant in humans. (Watch out Inigo Montoya…)
191. The face of a penny can hold about thirty drops of water.
192. Medieval knights put sharkskin on their swordhandles to give them a more secure grip; they would dig the sharp scales into their palms.
193. Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark’s stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.
194. The only planet without a ring is earth.
195. Wayne’s World was filmed in two weeks.
196. If you feed a seagull Alka-Seltzer, its stomach will explode.
197. The raised reflective dots in the middle of highways are called Botts dots.
198. Boris Karloff is the narrator of the seasonal television special “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”
199. A group of unicorns is called a blessing.
200. Twelve or more cows are known as a “flink.”
201. A group of frogs is called an army.
202. A group of rhinos is called a crash.
203. A group of kangaroos is called a mob.
204. A group of whales is called a pod.
205. A group of geese is called a gaggle.
206. A group of ravens is called a murder.
207. A group of officers is called a mess.
208. A group of larks is called an exaltation.
209. A group of owls is called a parliament.
210. The 80s song “Rosanna” from the Eighties was written about Rosanna Arquette, the actress. Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister.
211. Starfish don’t have brains.
212. Shrimps’ hearts are in their heads.
213. The derivation of the word trivia comes from the Latin “tri-” + “via”, which means three streets. This is because in ancient times, at an intersection of three streeets in Rome (or some other Italian place), they would have a type of kiosk where ancillary information was listed. You might be interested in it, you might not, hence they were bits of “trivia.”