ANIMALS

• A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.
• A group of geese on the ground is a gaggle, a group of geese in the air is a skein.
• The underside of a horse's hoof is called a frog. The frog peels off several times a year with new growth.
• 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 to realize what is occurring, relax and correct itself.
• 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 only have about ten.
• Dogs have about 100 different facial expressions, most of them made with the ears.
• Pollsters say that 40% of dog and cat owners carry pictures of the pets in their wallets.
• In Budapest, they control the pigeon population by mixing birth control chemicals with the birdseed.
• Sixty cows can produce a ton of milk a day.
• To survive, every bird must eat at least half its own weight in food each day.
• Relative to their weight and size, birds are stronger than people.
• Gigantactis, which swims at a depth of 6,000 feet, lights its way through the ocean depths by a bright light it carries at the end of a rod projecting from its head.
• The Marine Iguanas of Galapagos fight duels by standing forehead to forehead and pushing against each other.
• The chameleon has eyes independent of each other and can simultaneously look in 2 directions.
• The sea hare lays 478,000,000 eggs in 4 months.
• Hens don't crush the eggs they sit on because the hen is squatting, not sitting. Her full weight is not on the egg. Also, her body is contoured to fit just right over the egg, surrounding it with warmth without crushing it.
• In parts of Alaska, it's illegal to feed alcohol to a moose.
• In Utah, birds have the right of way on all highways.
• The groundhog is only accurate in predicting the weather 28% of the time.
• In England there is no difference between a pig and a hog, but in North America, if a pig is over 180 pounds, it is considered a hog.
• What happens to houseflies in the winter? In fact, none of them make it from one summer to the next no matter where they are. Most don't even make it through the month, with a typical life-span that ranges from one to three weeks. So shouldn't their reappearance en masse each summer fly in the face of logic? No, because a few manage to survive - and because a single pair can generate more than three trillion offspring in one season.
• The biggest hog ever recorded was a creature named Big Boy who weighed in at 1,904 pounds.
• Magicians pull a rabbit from a hat with this routine. A top hat is placed upright on the back of a table. On a shelf on the magician's side of the table, concealed from the audience, is a handkerchief holding the rabbit. The handkerchief is formed into a bag by a rubber band that ties its corners together. While the magician waves his wand over the hat with one hand, he uses the fingers on the other to simultaneously grasp the hat brim and the top of the bag below it. As he pulls the hat off the table he sweeps the bag into it, simultaneously flipping off the rubber band and turning over the hat. Voila! Out comes the rabbit.
• Dogs talk with their tails, as they do with their eyes, mouth, and paws. They're pretty articulate with their body language, as anybody who owns a dog can tell you. For example, when it comes to communicating with their tails, canines understand each other precisely. A tail sticking straight up means "I'm top dog here. "Tucking the tail means "you're the boss." But these universal signals are not so clear and precise when the "conversation" is dog-to-person. That's because centuries of breeding have muddled the animal's natural, inborn responses.
• When reflected from bright lights (head lights) deer's eyes are orange, wheras cats and dogs are green. Rabbits eyes remain black.
• Dogs will yawn in order to express that there is a conflict of interest between their own ideas or desires and those of their owners.
• The heaviest dog on record is an Old English Mastiff named Zorba, who weighed 343 pounds and measured 8 feet and 3 in. from nose to tail.
• The average cat food meal is the equivalent to about five mice.
• Termites are affected by music. They will eat your house twice as fast if you play loud music.
• Deep sea clams can live to be more than 100 years old.
• Dolphins don't automatically breath, they have to tell themselves to.
• The RCMP's first tracking dog was named Dale.
• Sheep prefer to drink running water.
• A seagull drinks salt water because it has special glands that filter out the salt.
• Forty percent of the farm-grown catfish in the United States is consumed by Texans.
• To combat the deadly killer bee, the Harris County Fire Department (Houston, Texas) has 11 trucks equipped with soapy water sprayers that do nothing but respond to killer bee calls. Currently, the Austin Texas Fire Department will only deal with emergency situations involving killer bee attacks in progress.
• Mayflies live only one day as an adult. During that day they molt twice, mate, and lay eggs in water.
• The male gypsy moth can "smell" the virgin female gypsy moth from 1.8 miles away
• A rhinoceros horn is made of compacted hair.
• Tuna swim at a steady rate of nine miles per hour for an indefinite period of time -- and they never stop moving. Estimates indicate that a fifteen year old tuna must have traveled one million miles in its lifetime
• "Three dog night" (attributed to Australian Aborigines) came about because on especially cold nights these nomadic people needed three dogs (dingos, actually) to keep from freezing.
• Mosquito repellents don't repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito's sensors so they don't know you are there.
• Deer can abort a pregnancy if there is not enough food to support the deer population. She absorbs the fetus back into her system, or she can hold off giving birth until there are the right conditions.
• Lorne Greene had one of his nipples bitten off by an alligator while he was host of "Lorne Greene's Wild Kingdom."
• Cat's urine glows under a blacklight.
• If you bring a raccoon's head to the Henniker, New Hampshire town hall, you are entitled to receive $.10 from the town.
• 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.
• A certain musical note can sexually excite cats -- the same note when played for kittens makes them want to go to the bathroom.
• If disconnected, the sex organs of an armadillo are still active.
• The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used.
• All porcupines float in water.
• Only male crickets chirp.
• 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 round floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
• Dutch engineers have developed a computerized machine that allows a cow to milk itself. Each cow in the herd has a computer chip in its collar. If the computer senses that the cow has not been milked in a given period of time, the milk-laden animal is allowed to enter the stall. The robot sensors locate the teats, apply the vacuum devices, and the cow is milked. The machine costs a mere $250,000 and is said to boost milk production by 15%.
• The names of the three wise monkeys are: Mizaru: See no evil, Mikazaru: Hear no evil, and Mazaru: Speak no evil.
• When opossums are playing "possum", they are not playing. They actually pass out from sheer terror.
• Lobsters can move up to 25 feet per second underwater.
• You can tell a turtle's sex by its sound. Males grunt, females hiss.
• Human birth control pills work on gorillas.
• The eagle has sex while going up to 60 mph. in flight, and it is common for both eagles to hit the ground before they finish.
• Apart from humans, certain species of chimpanzee are the only animals to experiment sexually. They have been known to 'wife swap' and indulge in group sex.
• According to Dr. David Gems, a British geneticist, sex-craved male mice, who spend 5 to 11 hours per day pursuing female mice, could live years longer if they abstained.
• Some dinosaurs were as small as hens.
• Some spiders have eight eyes.
• The Southern Elephant Seal is the largest living carnivore
• Kitti's Hognosed Bat is the smallest living mammal
• The monarch butterfly's sense of taste is about 12,000 times more sensitive than a human's.
• Sixty cows can produce a ton of milk a day.
• The Blesbok, a South African antelope, is almost the same color as grape juice.
• Zebras have stripes because the stripes camouflage a zebra and help them hide from their enemies. This is done by breaking the outline of a zebra when it moves through tall grass. Rather than receiving a full view of a zebra, a predator only sees a bunch of vertical lines. This effect is particularly accented on a hot day when heat waves are rising from the earth.
• An ostrich's eye is bigger that it's brain.
• The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.
• Elephants can't jump, however, every other mammal can.
• It's possible to lead a cow upstairs...but not downstairs.
• Humans are the only primates that don't have pigment in the palms of their hands.
• A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
• There are more chickens than people in the world.
• A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
• Cows fart on average about 300 times a day. Humans fart, on average, only 8 times per day.
• Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
• The cost of raising a medium-size dog to the age of eleven is $6,400.
• Some ribbon worms will eat themselves if they can't find any food.
• Dolphins sleep with one eye open.
• Owls are the only birds who can see the color blue.
• Slugs have four noses.
• There wasn't a single pony in the Pony Express, just horses.
• Honeybees have hair on their eyes.
• A jellyfish is 95 percent water.
• The starfish is one of the only animals who can turn it's stomach inside-out.
• The penguin is the only bird who can swim, but not fly.
• A cockroach can live nine days without its head before it starves to death.
• Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.
• A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.
• Polar bears are left handed.
• A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.
• A mosquito has 47 teeth.
• Migrating geese fly in a tight V-formation, as if they had undergone military training. They're actually taking advantage of the aerodynamic phenomenon that requires less energy to fly in a V formation, which reduces the air pressure or drag against their wings. By flying to the side rather than directly behind the bird in front, they also avoid the air turbulence caused by the lead bird's flight.
• The ant can lift 50 times its own weight, can pull 30 times its own weight and always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.
• Many hamsters only blink one eye at a time.
• Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, dogs only have about ten.
• The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds. That makes the catfish rank #1 for animal having the most taste buds.
• The flea can jump 350 times its body length. That is like a human jumping the length of a football field.
• The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male's head off.
• Some lions mate over 50 times a day.
• Butterflies taste with their feet.
• Armadillos have four babies at a time and they are always all the same sex.
• About 80 percent of all bird species in the world inhabit wetlands.
• A hedgehog's heart beats 300 times a minute on average.
• Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand.
• The placement of a donkey's eyes in its head enables it to see all four feet at all times.
• Ants stretch when they wake up in the morning.
• In Cleveland, Ohio, it's illegal to catch mice without a hunting license.
• The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.
• A mole can dig a tunnel 300 feet long in just one night.
• Over 1,000 birds a year die from smashing into windows.
• The world's smallest mammal is the bumblebee bat of Thailand, weighing less than a penny.
• A garter snake can give birth to 85 babies.
• If you unfolded and laid out the delicate membranes from inside a dogs nose, the membranes would be larger than the dog itself.
• Kangaroos can hop as fast as 40 miles per hour.
• Crickets hear with their legs.
• A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
• In the past 60 years, the groundhog has only predicted the weather correctly 28% of the time.
• A polar bear's skin is black. Its fur is not white, but actually clear.
• A snail can sleep for 3 years.
• If you keep a goldfish in the dark room, it will eventually turn white.
• The mudskipper is a fish that can actually walk on land.
• A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.
• A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
• 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.
• The flying gurnard, a fish, swims in water, walks on land, and flies through the air.
• Penguins typically mate only once a year and lay one egg.
• Very few species of shark, including the Mako and great white, are warm blooded.
• There is an average of 50,000 spiders per acre in green areas.
• A hippo can open its mouth wide enough to fit a 4 foot tall child inside.
• A hummingbird weighs less than a penny.
• A lobster's blood is blue
• There are more plastic flamingos in the US than real ones.
• It's against the law to have a pet dog in Iceland.
• The oldest known goldfish was 41 years old.
• The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used.
• For $150 you can become a licensed dead animal hauler in Texas.
• The world's horse population is estimated at 75,000,000, the oldest horse recorded being Old Billy who was foaled in 1760 and died in 1822 at the age of 62.
• The oldest cat lived in Austin , TX. He died at the age of 34.
• The katydid bug hears through holes in its hind legs.
• A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue.
• Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.
• Armadillos are the only animal besides humans that can get leprosy.
• 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 whales is called a pod. 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.
• Armadillos have four babies at a time and they are always the same sex.
• The praying mantis is the only insect that can turn its head.
• In Tokyo, they sell toupees for dogs.
• Squirrels don't dig up nuts they previously buried. They actually track down nuts other squirrels buried. You see, squirrels have a keen sense of smell but a lousy memory. They forget where they buried their own stash, but can sniff out others.
• There are over 52.6 million dogs in the US.
• Dogs and cats consume almost $7 billion worth of pet food a year.
• The peregrine falcon dives at more than 200 miles an hour.
• It takes 640 days, or 21 months, to make an African elephant.
• You should not eat raw shellfish. Shellfish often eat raw sewage and contain high levels of bacteria.
• According to National Geographic, scientists have settled the old dispute over which came first -- the chicken or the egg. They say that reptiles were laying eggs thousands of years before chickens appeared, and the first chicken came from an egg laid by a bird that was not quite a chicken. That seems to answer the question. The egg came first.
• In Minnesota, its illegal to tease skunks
• The blue whale is the largest animal ever known.
• Baby robins eat 14 feet of earthworms every day.
• An average adult female wolf in Minnesota weighs 60 to 80 pounds.
• There are more chickens than people in the world.
• You can't plow a cotton field with an elephant in North Carolina - it's against the law.
• There are close to 4,000 known species of frogs, including toads. The biggest frog is the appropriately named Goliath frog (Conraua goliath) of Cameroon. They reach nearly 30cm (a foot) and weigh as much as 3.3 kilograms. The smallest frog is the Gold frog (Psyllophryne Didactyla) of Brazil. They grow to only 9.8 mm (3/8 inch).
• The zoo in Tokyo closes for two months of the year so animals can have a holiday from visitors.
• On average people fear spiders more than they do death.
• The duckbill platypus (male) is the only venomous mammal in the world.
• The last ever cavalry charge in the world took place at the battle of Omdurman. The young Winston Churchill took part in it.

APOLLO-SATURN FACTS & FIGURES

• The possibility of a micrometeoroid as big as a cigarette ash striking the command module during an 8-day lunar missions has been computed as 1 in 1230. If a meteoroid did strike the module, it would be at a velocity of 98,500 feet per second. The probability of the command module getting hit is 0.000815. The probability of the command module not getting hit is 0.999185.
• The heat leak from the Apollo cryogenic tanks, which contain hydrogen and oxygen, is so small that if one hydrogen tank containing ice were placed in a room heated to 70 degrees F, a total of 8-1/2 years would be required to melt the ice to water at just one degree above freezing. It would take approximately 4 years more for the water to reach room temperature. The gases in the cryogenic tanks are utilized in the production of electrical power by the Apollo fuel cell system and provide oxygen for the use of the crew.
• When the Apollo spacecraft passes through the Van Allen belts on its way to the moon, the astronauts will be exposed to radiation roughly equivalent to that of a dental X-ray.
• With gravity on the moon only one-sixth as strong as on earth, it is necessary that this difference be related to the Apollo vehicle. A structure 250 feet high and 400 feet long in which cables lift five-sixth of the spacecraft vehicle weight is being used in tests to simulate lunar conditions and their effect on the vehicle.
• The command module panel display includes 24 instruments, 566 switches, 40 even indicators (mechanical), and 71 lights.
• The command module offers 73 cubic feet per man as against 68 feet per man in a compact car. By comparison, the Mercury spacecraft offered 55 cubic feet for its one traveler and Gemini provided 40 cubic feet per man.
• The angular accuracy requirement of midcourse correction of the spacecraft for all thrusting maneuvers is one degree.
• If you car gets 15 miles to the gallon, you could drive 18 million miles or around the world about 400 times on the propellants required for the Apollo/Saturn lunar landing mission. The Saturn V launch vehicle contains 5.6 million pounds of propellant (or 960,000 gallons).
• When the Apollo spacecraft re-enters the atmosphere it will generate energy equivalent to approximately 86,000 kilowatt hours of electricity - enough to light the city of Los Angeles for about 104 seconds; or the energy generated would lift all the people in the USA 10-3/4 inches off the ground.
• The fully loaded Saturn V launch vehicle with the Apollo Spacecraft stands 60 feet higher than the Statue of Liberty on its pedestal and weighs 13 times as much as the statue. During its 3.5 second firing, the Apollo Spacecraft's solid-fuel launch escape rocket generates the horsepower equivalent of 4,300 automobiles.
• The engines of the Saturn V launch vehicle that will propel the Apollo spacecraft to the moon have combined horsepower equivalent to 543 jet fighters.
• The Apollo environmental control system has 180 parts in contrast to 8 for the average home window air conditioner. The Apollo environmental control system performs 23 functions compared to 5 for the average home conditioner. There are 23 functions of the environmental control system, which include: air cooling, air heating, humidity control, ventilation to suits, ventilation to cabin, air filtration, CO2 removal, odor removal, waste management functions, etc.
• The 12-foot-high Apollo spacecraft command module contains about fifteen miles of wire, enough to wire 50 two-bedroom homes.
• The astronaut controls and monitors the stabilization and control system by means of two handgrip controllers, 34 switches, and 6 knobs.
• The Apollo command module can sustain a hole as large as 1/4 inch in diameter and still maintain the pressure inside for 15 minutes, which is considered long enough for an astronaut to put on a spacesuit.
• The boost protective cover will protect the command module from temperatures expected to reach 1200 degrees during the launch phase.
• The power of one Saturn V is enough to place in earth orbit all U.S. manned spacecraft previously launched.
• Here is an analogy pertaining to the benefits of the multistage concept as opposed to the single-stage, brute-force method. If a steam locomotive pulling three coal cars carries all three cars along until all fuel is exhausted, the locomotive could travel 500 miles. By dropping off each car as its coal is expended the locomotive could travel 900 miles.
• The F-1's fuel pumps push fuel with the force of 30 diesel locomotives.
• Enough liquid oxygen is contained in the first stage tank to fill 54 railroad tank cars.
• The five F-1 engines equal 160,000,000 horsepower, about double the amount of potential hydroelectric power that would be available at any given moment if all the moving waters of North America were channeled through turbines.
• The interior of each of the first stage propellant tanks is large enough to accommodate three large moving vans side by side.
• The Saturn V's second stage construction is comparable to that of an eggshell in efficiency, the amount of weight and pressure constrained by a thin wall.
• Total amount of propellant (fuel and oxidizer) in the Saturn V launch vehicle, service module, and lunar module is 5,625,000 pounds. The ratio of propellant to payload in Saturn V is 50 to 1.
• The main computer in the command module occupies only one cubic foot.
• While an automobile has less than 3,000 functional parts, the command module has more than 2,000,000 not counting wires and skeletal components.
• The command module uses only about 2000 watts of electricity, similar to the amount required by an oven in an electric range.
• The honeycomb aluminum used in Apollo's inner crew compartment is 40-percent stronger and 40-percent lighter than ordinary aluminum.
• The tanks which hold the cryogenic (ultra-cold) liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen on the Apollo spacecraft come close to being the only leak-free vessels ever built. If an automobile tire leaked at the same rate that these tanks do, it would take the tire 32,400,000 years to go flat.
• There are approximately 2-1/2 million solder joints in the Saturn V launch vehicle. If just 1/32 of an inch too much wire were left on each of these joints and an extra drop of solder was used on each of these joints, the excess weight would be equivalent to the payload of the vehicle.
• The Apollo Lunar Landing program during the 1960's used the most powerful and largest rocket to date, the Saturn V. The Saturn V rocket was 363 feet tall and 33 feet wide at its widest. It held 3 stages and carried the 90 ton Apollo spacecraft up and into lunar orbit.
• Because of the supercold propellants in its tanks, the Saturn V gained an additional 1,400 pounds of weight in ice forming on the skin of the propellant tanks before liftoff. It was almost all shed from the vehicle as the Saturn V's F-1 engines ignited and built up thrust before liftoff.
• During each launch, the Saturn V would generate eighty-five times as much power as the Hoover Dam. The combined power of the first two stages generated enough energy to supply all of New York City for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
• The explosive potential of a fully-fueled Saturn V was the equivalent of a small nuclear weapon.
• With the exception of emergency fire-rescue crews stationed about 1 kilometer (3280 feet) from the pad, the nearest spectators were 3-1/2 miles (5.6 km) away near the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB).
• A fully-fueled Saturn V stood 7&7/8 inches (20 cm) shorter than when un-fueled, due to settling caused by the weight of the propellants.
• General Motors' Saturn line of cars is named after the Saturn launch vehicles. (On the other hand the Saturn (car) SL1 will nearly fit inside the bell of a single F-1 engine, and gets MUCH better gas mileage)
• If you laid the Saturn V on its side, its overall length exceeds the length of a football or soccer field. The height of the vehicle is equivalent to a 36-story building.
• During the launch of SA-512 (Apollo 17), the glow its fiery liftoff and the exhaust plume were visible as far north as Cape Hatteras, North Carolina and as far south as Cuba. As SA-512 built up thrust and lifted off from the pad, many described the launch as a second sunrise, even tricking the photocells on nearby street lamps into turning off. The actual, official sunrise was only but a few hours away.
• During the launch of Apollo 4, sensitive instruments in New York City picked up the shock wave of the liftoff of the Saturn V.
•  

ELVIS PRESLEY

Similarities between Jesus and Elvis Presley...

• JESUS is the Lord's shepherd. ELVIS dated Cybill Shepherd.
• JESUS was a carpenter. ELVIS' favorite high school class was wood shop.
• JESUS was part of the Trinity. ELVIS' very first band was a trio.
• JESUS' entourage, the Apostles, had 12 members. ELVIS' entourage, the Memphis Mafia, had 12 members.
• JESUS is a Capricorn. (December 25) ELVIS is a Capricorn (January 8).
• JESUS was the lamb of God. ELVIS had mutton chop sideburns.
• JESUS was first and foremost the Son of God. ELVIS first recorded with Sun Studios, performing what are still considered to be his foremost recordings.
• JESUS' Father is everywhere. ELVIS' father was a drifter, and moved around quite a bit.
• JESUS said, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink." (John 7:37) ELVIS said, "Drinks on me!" (Jailhouse Rock, MGM:1957)
• JESUS fasted for 40 days and nights. ELVIS had irregular eating habits. (e.g.: 5 banana splits for breakfast)
• JESUS said: "Man shall not live by bread alone." ELVIS liked his sandwiches with peanut butter and bananas.
• Matthew was one of JESUS' many biographers. (The Gospel According to Matthew) Neil Matthews was one of ELVIS' many biographers. (Elvis: A Golden Tribute)
• "[JESUS'] countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow." (Matthew 28:3) ELVIS wore snow-white jumpsuits with (TCB) lightning bolts.
• JESUS said: "Love thy neighbor." (Matthew 22:39) ELVIS said: "Don't be cruel." (RCA 1956)
• JESUS walked on water. (Matthew 14:25) ELVIS surfed on water. (Blue Hawaii, Paramount:1965)
• Mary, an important woman in JESUS' life, had an Immaculate Conception. Priscilla, an important woman in ELVIS' life, attended Immaculate Conception High School.
• JESUS H. CHRIST has 12 letters. ELVIS PRESLEY has 12 letters. No one knows what the "H" in "JESUS H. Christ" stood for. No one was really sure if ELVIS' middle name was "Aron" or "Aaron".
• JESUS wore a crown of thorns. ELVIS wore Royal Crown hair styler.
• JESUS had his famous Resurrection. ELVIS had the famous 1968 "comeback" TV special.
• JESUS lived in a state of grace, in a Near Eastern land. ELVIS lived in Graceland, in a nearly eastern state.

NUMBERS

• 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
• Multiply 37,037 by any single number (1-9), then multiply that number by 3. Every digit in the answer will be the same as that first single number.
• The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000
• 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.
• And the answer is 17...
  • There are 17 notes in the 17th measure of the 17th Prelude in Bach's Well Tempered Clavier.
  • Bach was born in the 17th century, married his wife on October 17, 1707, became the Weimar Kapellmeister in 1717.
  • According to a study by Masters & Johnson, the average American teenage boy has a sex-related thought once every 17 seconds.
  • The Universe is roughly 10^17 seconds old. The nearest star to the sun is about 10^17 meters away.
  • After a 17 week long convention, the United States Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787.
  • The cicada, whose Latin name is Cicada Septemdecim (17 letters), is a locust that takes 17 years to mature. After the cicada eggs hatch, the resulting nymph burrows in the ground for 17 years.
  • The consecutive application of the three basic trigonometric functions sine, cosine, tangent on any number n in degrees always results in .017... i.e., tan(cos(sin(n))) = .017... for ANY n in degrees.
  • K_17 is the smallest complete graph which must have a monochromatic triangle when 3-colored. Seventeen people in the world understand what this really means.
  • If you look up Haiku, a 17-syllable Japanese poetry form, in the index of Godel, Escher, Bach, by Douglass Hofstader (17 letters), you will find on page 765 (45 * 17) a reference to page 153 (9 * 17).
  • The Tower of Pisa is leaning 17 feet from the vertical.
  • The 1988 Seoul Olympics lasted for 17 days. The time difference between Seoul and Los Angeles (site of the 1984 Olympics) is 17 hours. On 9/28/88 (92888 = 17 * 5464), the United States had a total of 51 (17*3) medals: 17 Gold, 17 Silver, 17 Bronze.
  • On his voyage in 1493 (1+4+9+3 = 17) Columbus and his two brothers brought 17 shiploads of settlers to Hispaniola.
  • There are 17 sentences in the 17th paragraph of the 17th chapter of War and Peace by Tolstoy. In 1862 (1 + 8 + 6 + 2 = 17), at the age of 34 (34 = 17 * 2), Tolstoy married a woman 17 years of age.
  • The eccentricity of the Earth's orbit is 0.017.
  • In the English language, the seventeenth letter, Q, appears with the frequency of 0.17%.
  • 17 million immigrants came through Ellis Island from the time it opened until the end of World War II. The main building on Ellis Island opened on December 17, 1900. Only 17 tiles in the vaulted ceiling had to be replaced since its opening.
  • The two great universities in Cambridge are Harvard University (17 letters) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (34 = 17*2 letters)...
  • In the 1993-1994 issue of the CUE Guide the entry for Chemistry 17 was spread out on pages 250, 251 (2 * 5 + 0 + 2 + 5 * 1 = 17) and it says that in the term Fall 1992 (1992/17 = 117.17...), there were 34 (17 * 2) first years. The Subject matter was rated 3.4 (17 * .2).
• One quarter of the bones in your body are in your feet.
• Pound for pound, hamburgers cost more than new cars.
• America once issued a 5-cent bill.
• In the White House, there are 13,092 knives, forks and spoons.
• You'll eat about 35,000 cookies in a lifetime.
• Taxpayers spent $57,000 on gold-embossed playing cards for Air Force One.
• If you were to spell out numbers you would have to go until "One thousand" until you will find the letter "A"
• A lead pencil is good for about 50,000 words.
• 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.
• If you toss a penny 10,000 times, it will not be heads 5,000 times, but more like 4,950. The heads picture weighs more, so it ends upon the bottom.
• There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
• The Gettysburg address is 269 words, the Declaration of Independence is 1,337 words, and the Holy Bible is only 773,000 [what version?] words. However, the tax law has grown from 11,400 words in 1913, to 7 million words today. There are at least 480 different tax forms, each with many pages of instructions. Even the easiest form, the 1040E has 33 pages in instructions, and all in fine print. The IRS sends out 8 billion pages of forms and instructions each year. Laid end to end, they would stretch 28 times around the earth. Nearly 300,000 trees are cut down yearly to produce the paper for all the IRS forms and instructions. American taxpayers spend $200 billion and 5.4 billion hours working to comply with federal taxes each year, more than it takes to produce every car, truck, and van in the United States. The IRS employs 114,000 people; that's twice as many as the CIA and five times more than the FBI. 60% of taxpayers must hire a professional to get through their own return. Taxes eat up 38.2% of the average family's income; that's more than for food, clothing and shelter combined.
• Third World countries how about First and Second World nations? Third World nations are in third place because their economic development lags behind that of countries such as the U.S., Britain, and Germany, which are part of the First World (although they are rarely labeled that way). But then who are the mysterious members of World Number Two? The answer is in the history books. The three groupings date from the Cold War and originally depended on politics even more than economics. In The First World were the Western nations, those countries still economically number one today. The Second World consisted of the Communist countries. In the Third World were those "neutral" nations committed to neither of the two main power "blocs." Many of them are still third economically. Although we don't use "Second World" any more, Russia and China would probably be in it today based on their economies.
• Some people consider the $1 bill unlucky because there are so many 13's on it: 13 stars, 13 stripes, 13 steps, 13 arrows and even an olive branch with 13 leaves on it.
• Ten percent of the Russian government's income comes from the sale of vodka.
• On average, 100 people choke to death on ball-point pens every year.
• In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all the world's nuclear weapons combined.
• In the USA, the average price of a day in the hospital is $360, in Japan one day is $60.
• Average age of top GM executives in 1994 was 49.8 years. Average age of the Rolling Stones in 1994 was 50.6.
• The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.
• A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
• A quarter has 119 grooves on its edge, a dime has one less groove.
• More Monopoly money is printed in a year than real money printed throughout the world.
• 33% of women surveyed lie about their weight.
• The Earth weighs around 6,588,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons.
• Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 calorie.
• The average person has over 1,460 dreams a year.
• 7% of Americans don't know the first nine words of the American anthem, but know the first seven of the Canadian anthem. 5% of Canadians don't know the first seven words of the Canadian anthem, but know the first nine of the American anthem.
• You're born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult, you only have 206.
• Your heart beats over 100,000 times a day.
• Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails.
• You blink about 84,000,000 times a year.

FOODS

• Did you know that there are coffee flavored PEZ.
• The world's largest wine cask is in Heidelberg, Germany.
• On Sunday, it is illegal to sell cornflakes in Columbus, Ohio.
• Blueberry Jelly Bellies were created especially for Ronald Reagan.
• It takes about a half a gallon of water to cook macaroni, and about a gallon to clean the pot.
• M&M's stands for the last names of Forrest Mars, Sr., then candy maker, and his associate Bruce Murrie.
• The shape of plant collenchyma cells and the shape of the bubbles in beer foam are the same - they are orthotetrachidecahedrons.
• Non-dairy creamer is flammable.
• Iron deficiency causes the most common form of anaemia.
• According to Archives of General Medicine, coffee drinkers have sex more frequently and enjoy it more than non-coffee drinkers.
• Americans spend more on dog food every year than they spend on baby food.
• The first cook book was written by the Greeks in 400 B.C.
• The A&W of root beer fame stands for Allen and Wright.
• Tomatoes were originally thought to be poisonous. But a Virginia doctor demonstrated that wasn't the case in 1733. Dr. Siccary ate the fruit and declared it was not only edible, but very delicious.
• Sensitivity to foods may increase when they are consumed with, or around, the same time as alcohol.
• What do they do with the rest of the lobster when restaurants serve lobster tails? The secret is that there are two kinds of lobsters. There's the kind that gives its all to make sure you have eaten well. This is the Maine or American lobster, all of which, claws to tail, is eaten, usually with pronounced slurping noises and looks of satisfaction (on the diner's face, of course). The spiny or rock lobster, on the other hand is the source of lobster tails, has only one really thick and juicy part, and it's aft. The rest ends up in soups, sauces, seafood salad and egg rolls.
• Dr. Miles Compound Extract of Tomato, a patent medicine, went on the market in the 1830s - it was ketchup.
• The first drive through window at a restaurant was at the McDonald's in Sierra Vista, AZ. It was put in so the soldiers from Ft. Huachuca could get food since the base had a regulation prohibiting anyone in uniform from entering a business establishment.
• 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.
• The Baby Ruth candy bar was actually named after Grover Cleveland's baby daughter, Ruth.
• Coca-Cola was originally green.
• Unless you have a doctor's note, its illegal to buy ice cream after 6 p.m. in Newark, New Jersey.
• American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first-class.
• Iceland consumes more Coca-Cola per capita than any other nation.
• More than 17-billion hot dogs are sold annually in the United States.
• Scientists have found chocolate has a chemical that helps counteract depression.
• 1 out of 3 of all cows in the US used for food purposes (beef) are used by the McDonald's Corp.
• Honey is the only food that doesn't spoil.
• 85% of us will eat Spam this year.
• 70% of us drink orange juice daily.
• Snickers is the most popular candy.
• The average chocolate bar has 8 insects' legs in it.
• In America in 1977, the punishment for smuggling marijuana was 15 years less than the punishment for smuggling coffee.
• Boxes of candy given as romantic gifts must weigh more than 50lbs. in Idaho
• If you doubt the importance of BEER in history read on...
  • It was the accepted practice in Babylonia 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink.
  • Mead is a honey beer, and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the "honey month" or what we know today as the "honeymoon."
  • Before thermometers were invented, brewers would dip a thumb or finger into the mix to find the right temperature for adding yeast. Too cold, and the yeast wouldn't grow. Too hot, and the yeast would die. This thumb in the beer is where we get the phrase "rule of thumb."
  • In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts. So in old England, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them to mind their own pints and quarts and settle down. It's where we get the phrase "mind your P's and Q's."
  • Beer was the reason the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. It's clear from the Mayflower's log that the crew didn't want to waste beer looking for a better site. The log goes on to state that the passengers "were hasted ashore and made to drink water that the seamen might have the more beer."
  • After consuming a bucket or two of vibrant brew they called Aul, or ale, the Vikings would head fearlessly into battle often without armor or even shirts. In fact, the term "berserk" means "bare shirt" in Norse, and eventually took on the meaning of their wild battles.
  • In 1740 Admiral Vernon of the British fleet decided to water down the navy's rum. Needless to say, the sailors weren't too pleased and called Admiral Vernon "Old Grog," after the stiff wool grogram coats he wore. The term "grog" soon began to mean the watered down drink itself. When you were drunk on this grog, you were "groggy."
  • Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim or handle of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. "Wet your whistle" is the phrase inspired by this practice.
• Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.
• Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
• A pound of termites has more nutrients than a pound of beef or pork.
• The Chinese were the first to invent ketchup which was called ke-tsiap and which had pickled fish and spices (no tomatoes). In the 1870's New England colonists mixed tomatoes into the sauce creating present day ketchup.
• The drink '7UP' used to contain lithium (an anti-depressant).
• The 3 most valuable brand names on earth are Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.
• The tomato was originally considered a fruit
• Five Jell-O flavors that flopped: celery, coffee, cola, apple, and chocolate.
• Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.
• If every Oreo cookie ever made were stacked on top of each other (more than 345 billion), the pile would reach to the moon and back more than five times. Then again, if placed side-by-side, they would encircle the earth 381 times at the equator.
• Two-thirds of the world's eggplant is grown in New Jersey.
• The average American consumes a pound of chocolate a month...plus an extra pound on Christmas and Easter and two extra pounds at Halloween.
• Almonds are a member of the peach family.
• The average American visits a fast food restaurant six times a month.
• After eating, a housefly regurgitates its food and then eats it again.
• The world's largest oatmeal cake was baked and built in Bertram, Texas during Labor Day weekend 1991. The 33-layer cake stood more than 3 feet tall, weighed 333 pounds, and served 3,333 people.
• You would have to drink 100 cups of coffee in four hours to get a lethal dose of caffeine--ten grams.
• The average human eats 8 spiders in their lifetime at night.
• The first product to have a UPC bar code on its packaging was Wrigley's gum.
• The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
• The average American will eat about 11.9 pounds of cereal per year.
• During your lifetime, you'll eat about 60,000 pounds of food. That's the weight of about six elephants.
• The worlds oldest piece of chewing gum is 9,000 years old.
• The number one selling snack in the U.S.A. is potato chips.
• The average American drinks about 600 sodas a year.
• Eskimo ice cream is neither icy, or creamy.
• Properly kept, vitamins remain stable for four years.
• Caffeine can produce the same symptoms as anxiety neurosis: insomnia, muscle twitching, headache, restlessness, and irritability.
• Kidney failures can be brought on by overuse of analgesics.
• The only place in the world where they make Dr. Pepper according to the original formula is in Dublin, Texas.
• Before it was unsolicited email, Spam was a luncheon meat. It is so resistant to spoilage that, if kept in the closed can, it may well outlast eternity and will certainly live longer than you. Believe it or not it was first promoted as a health food. In Korea it comes in gift boxes, and placed end to end, all the Spam ever sold would circle the Earth more than ten times.
• Three popular misconceptions about Thanksgiving:
  • It's only a U.S. holiday. Nope. Canada declared their Thanksgiving holiday in 1879. These days they observe it on the second Monday in October.
  • Turkeys originated in Turkey. No way. The English called it a turkey-cock, the same name they used for the guinea fowl that came from the Ottoman Empire. Colonists brought it over to America, where it became simply a turkey.
  • Turkeys have always been bred for their meat. Nah. Until the mid 1930s, it was their pretty plumage that people wanted most. However, it *is* true that they were never bred for their intelligence.
• Why do you sometimes see green tint on potato chips? The green is chlorophyll that was produced when a portion of the potato grew aboveground and was exposed to sunlight. This exposure also caused the production of another substance called solanine, which can be toxic.
• Why do onions make you cry? A fresh onion, when cut, releases a gas called propanethiol-Sin to the air. When this gas reaches your eyes, it mixes with the water in the eye to form a weak acid. This acid irritates the eye and causes the tear-producing glands to flood the eye with water in an attempt to wash away the irritant. These tears are what makes you look like you're crying.
• Why are sellers of illegal whiskey called bootleggers? Back in the days of the Old West it was illegal to sell alcohol to Native Americans. Disreputable vendors/peddlers would sometimes smuggle the alcohol onto Indian reservations by hiding flasks in the leg of their boots. These smugglers became known as "bootleggers," a term which now means anyone who smuggles illegal alcohol.
• Why do ice cubes stick together in a glass? Pressure causes ice to melt. Actually, this is what causes an iceberg/glacier to move. The tremendous weight of the glacier causes the ice on the very bottom to melt, creating a layer of water on which the glacier glides. When two ice cubes in a glass of water touch for a prolonged period of time, the slight pressure of one against the other causes a little bit of ice at the point of contact to melt. The melted water then flows away from the point of contact and immediately refreezes. This refrozen water forms sort of a "weld" which causes ice cubes to stick together.
• The Ritz cracker was introduced to markets in 1934, but gourmets had to wait until 1953 for the invention of cheese in a can.
• Teflon was discovered in 1938.
• The candy bar Baby Ruth wasn't named after Babe Ruth, but rather after the daughter of President Grover Cleveland.
• A company in Taiwan makes dinnerware out of wheat, so you can eat your plate.
• Babe Ruth wore a cabbage leaf under his cap to keep him cool. He changed it every two innings.
• Fortune cookies were actually invented in America, in 1918, by Charles Jung.
• Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.
• Americans on the average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.
• You are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a poisonous spider.
• Texas holds the record for the most chicken eaten by one person in a life time (estimated 1 Million Chickens In Only 40 Years).
• Over 90% of the calories you burn are used to maintain your body temperature. A good way to lose weight is, therefore, to expose your body to the cold.
• A McDonald's Big Mac bun has an average of 178 sesame seeds.
• Bananas grow on a tropical plant that is not a tree -it has no trunk. Bananas are gigantic herbs that spring from underground stems. What appears to be the trunk is a false stem formed by tightly wrapped leaf sheaths. With stalks 25 feet high, they're the largest plant on earth without a woody stem.
• In Lehigh, Nebraska it's against the law to sell donut holes.
• If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

MARKETING SCREW-UP'S

• Coors put its slogan, "Turn it loose," into Spanish where it was read as "Suffer from diarrhea."
• When Braniff translated a slogan touting its upholstery, "Fly in Leather," it came out in Spanish as "Fly Naked."
• Chicken magnate Frank Perdue's line, "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken," sounds much more interesting in Spanish: "It takes a sexually stimulated man to make a chicken affectionate."
• When Vicks first introduce its cough drops on the German market, they were chagrined to learn that the German pronunciation of "v" is "f," which in German is the guttural equivalent of "sexual penetration."
• Not to be outdone, Puffs tissues tried later to introduce its product, only to learn that "Puff" in German is a colloquial term for a whorehouse.
• Fresca, the soft drink, had problems when it was sold in Mexico. Fresca is slang for lesbian.
• Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.
• Clairol introduced the "Mist Stick", a curling iron, into German only to find out that "mist" is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the "manure stick."
• When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the US, with the beautiful Caucasian baby on the label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the label of what's inside, since most people can't read.
• Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno magazine.
• The Chevy Nova never sold well in Spanish speaking countries. "No Va" means "It Does Not Go" in Spanish.
• An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of "I saw the Pope" (el papa), the shirts read "I saw the potato" (la papa).
• Pepsi's "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" translated into "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave", in Chinese.
• Frank Perdue's chicken slogan, "it takes a strong man to make a tender chicken" was translated into Spanish as "it takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate."
• The Coca-Cola name in China was first read as "Ke-kou-ke-la", meaning "Bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax", depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 characters to find a phonetic equivalent "ko-kou-ko-le", translating into "happiness in the mouth."
• When Parker Pen marketed a ball-point pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to have read, "it won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you." Instead, the company thought that the word "embarazar" (to impregnate) meant to embarrass, so the ad read: "It won't leak in your pocket and make you pregnant."

PEOPLE

• The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the "American Pie." (Thus the name of the Don McLean song.)
• The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan."
• Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.
• Isaac Singer invented the sewing machine for home use in 1851.
• Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
• 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.
• 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.
• William Howard Taft, a former President who weighed 332 pounds, got stuck in the White House tub the first time he used it.
• Astronaut Neil Armstrong (Apollo 11) first stepped on the moon with his left foot.
• Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.
• If the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.
• Mel Blanc (voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots.
• If Barbie were life-size her measurements would be 39-23-33. She would stand seven feet, two inches tall and have a neck twice the length of a normal human's neck.
• Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
• Famous People Who Never Married...
  • Susan B. Anthony
  • Ludwig Van Beethoven
  • James Buchanan
  • Elizabeth I Queen of England
  • Joan of Arc
  • J. Edgar Hoover
  • Sir Isaac Newton
  • Florence Nightingale
  • Henry David Thoreau
  • Voltaire
• The last words of Nathan Hale, the American hanged as a spy by the British during the Revolution, are usually quoted as, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." But according to the diary of a British soldier who took down the remarks, what Hale said was much less poetic: "It is the duty of every good officer to obey any orders given to him by his commander-in-chief"
• President James Garfield was ambidextrous and could write Latin with one hand and Greek with the other simultaneously.
• Charles Lindburgh took only four sandwiches with him on his famous transatlantic flight.
• Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.
• US President with the Least Time in Office...William H. Harrison (32 days), second place goes to James A. Garfield (199 days)
• On the Forth of July 1992, Susan Jeske established a World Record, by singing the National Anthem at 17 events in 14 cities within a 24-hour period. She traveled 373 miles by a limousine, 8 miles by a helicopter, 3 miles by a boat and used a motorcycle to help her get through traffic and crowds.
• St. Stephen is the patron saint of bricklayers.
• In 1555, Ivan the Terrible ordered the construction of St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. He was so thrilled with the work done by the two architects that he had them blinded so they could never be able to build anything else more beautiful.
• Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 170 miles per hour.
• Human teeth are almost as hard as rocks.
• The length of the finger dictates how fast the finger-nail grows. Therefore, the nail on your middle finger grows the fastest, and on average, your toenails grow twice as slow as your finger-nails.
• Donald Duck comics were banned in Finland because he doesn't wear pants.
• Joe Louis is the only pro heavyweight champion to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He was there by Presidential orders because of all the work he did for the servicemen.
• Victor Hugo's Les Miserables contains one of the longest sentences in the French language--823 words without a period.
• Men have more blood than women. Men have 1.5 gallons for men versus .875 gallons for women.
• Vincent van Gogh didn't cut off his ear--not all of it anyway. He only cut a portion of the lobe.
• Both writer Edgar Allen Poe and LSD advocate Timothy Leary were kicked out of West Point.
• Americans will hold more parties in their homes on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year.
• The real Red Baron, Manfred von Richtofen, Germany's air ace in World War I, was nicknamed by Allied pilots for his plane, a red Albatros fighter. The other pilots in his squadron also flew colorful aircraft, earning the name "Flying Circus" for their group. Von Richtofen's 60 confirmed kills made him a feared and formidable opponent, a seemingly super-human pilot. But his luck ran out over France on April 21, 1918 when bullets from ground gunners and Canadian pilot Roy Brown ended his career and his life.
• Mary Todd once dated both Abe Lincoln and Stephen Douglas.
• The first typewriter was built by William Burt in 1829 and was intended to be used for the blind.
• Is it true that every U.S. president elected in years divisible by 20 has died in office? It isn't exactly true, but... the winner may have trouble buying life insurance. So far, nine presidents were elected in years divisible by 20. Six died before their term ended: William Henry Harrison (1840), Lincoln (1860), Garfield (1880), McKinley (1900), Harding (1920), and Kennedy (1960). Franklin D. Roosevelt was reelected in 1940 but died in 1945, after his 1944 reelection. So that's really seven out of nine.
• Why "sideburns"? Elvis Presley had them. So did several presidents of the United States in the late 19th century. But more to the point, Civil War General Ambrose Everett Burnside wore them and started a fashion trend. They were even called burnsides, after him. In fact, it's about the only thing at which he was really a success. He developed the breech-loading rifle, but then failed to market it effectively. He was a flop as a general, and was blamed for Union losses at Fredericksburg and Petersburg. Later he was a U.S. Senator and Governor of Rhode Island, but nobody can remember anything he did while in office.
• The Queen Does Not Look Well. When Pedro I became King of Portugal in the 14th century, he had his dead mistress dug up so she could be crowned queen alongside him. Many of the nobles at the coronation even kissed her hand!. After the ceremonies they put her back in the box and returned her to her tomb.
• Humans really use only 10% of their brains? The truth is though, that while we don't understand enough about the brain to know exactly how much of it we use, we know that we make use of much more than 10%. The brain has too much to do for 90% of it to be dormant. So where did this 10% business come from? No one's sure how the myth started. It may have simply been made up to illustrate through exaggeration the idea that human beings are far from reaching their mental potential. Or it may have been based on the fact that about 5% of our brain cells are functioning at any one time.
• Mao Zedong, like many Chinese of his time, refused to brush his teeth. Instead, he rinsed his mouth with tea and chewed the leaves. Why brush? "Does a tiger brush his teeth?" argued Mao. As you can imagine, his teeth were green. Chairman Mao also loved to chain-smoke English cigarettes, when his doctor asked him to cut down, he explained that "smoking is also a form of deep-breathing exercise, don't you think?"
• In Boston you can visit the grave of Elizabeth Goose, who in 1719 wrote the nursery rhymes now attributed to "Mother Goose." That's one version of the story. Another has it that a bookstore owner in Boston, Elizabeth Goose's son-in-law, published a collection of rhymes for children called "Songs for the Nursery or Mother Goose's Melodies for Children". His title, supposedly a tribute to Elizabeth Goose, was actually ironic. Her son-in-law found her singing unbearable. There's only one problem with these stories. They are about as true and reliable as, well, fairy tales. The character known as Mother Goose was first heard from in English in a collection of British nursery rhymes, "Mother Goose's Melody; or Sonnets for the Cradle", published in 1781 in Britain. She was fictional, probably derived from a French collection of fairy tales, "Tales of Mother Goose," published in 1697.
• Why does a sudden scare sometimes cure hiccups? Hiccups are spasms of the muscles in the diaphragm controlled by the vagus nerves. The spasms occur when the nerves are irritated, such as with a full stomach, carbonated water, etc. It is sometimes possible to stop the spasms by giving the vagus nerves other tasks to perform. Since a sudden scare sends a host of signals down the vagus nerves to slow the heartbeat and decrease blood pressure, this distraction often causes the nerves to forget about the spasms and the hiccups to stop.
• Why do we tie old shoes to the newlywed's car? Shoes are of course related to the foot, and feet have been considered phallic symbols since the beginning of civilization. The spirit embodied in the shoes is the same as that motivating the throwing of rice: it's a wish that the couple's union will be fruitful, that they will produce offspring.
• We've all known stuffed shirts. In old movies it was often the boss, who used words like "hrrumph!" Or teachers whose existence seemed to be justified by their ability to dampen any child's spirit. Such people always keep their top button buttoned and are never able to unbutton in any other sense. They have starch in their veins and are held upright and stiff by the narrowness of their outlook. Stuffed shirts have about as much life and dynamism as a scarecrow, the object from which the expression comes. We know we've come across the human variety when their shirt or blouse might as well be stuffed with straw for all the vitality and flexibility they display.
• Homo sapiens shouldn't feel too high and mighty, even though they currently dominate the Earth. After all, they are covered with flesh that medical scientists have determined bears an important resemblance to Silly Putty. The specific gravity of your skin and the gooey stuff is close enough that doctors have actually used Silly Putty to align and test CAT scan machines.
• The image of the king used in most standard decks of playing cards is said to have been based on Charles I, the English monarch who was beheaded in 1649.
• "King Louis XIV of France owned about 1,000 wigs.
• The 12th president of the United States was David Rice Atchinson, a Missouri senator who served for one day in 1849. The new president usually took office on March 4. But that year it fell on a Sunday, and although President James Polkleft on schedule, Zachary Taylor did not take the oath until the next day. Rice was president pro tempore of the Senate, and under the provisions of the Constitution, he served until Taylor was sworn in. Atchinson neither started a war nor raised any taxes: he just left quietly after 24 hours.
• People who have never been married are seven and a half times more likely than married people to be admitted to a psychiatric facility.
• Why do eyes sometimes appear red in a flash photograph? This occurs when a flash is aimed so that its light reflects off of the back of the eye and into the camera lens. The red you see in a photo is caused by the blood vessels in the retinal tissue on the back of the eye.
• Julius Caesar was self-conscious about his receding hairline.
• The only member of Custer's Brigade to survive the battle at Little Bighorn was an Indian Scout named known as "Curley".
• Professional football player Fred Cox invented the Nerf football because he wanted soft spiral football to protect players from injuries.
• Joseph Stalin refused a German request to swap prisoners in World War II. His son, who was captured during the war, died in a prison camp as a result.
• Douglas MacArthur's mother used to send letters to his military superiors suggesting that they promote her son.
• Aeschylus, the Greek playwright, was supposedly killed by a tortoise that was dropped on his head by an eagle who mistook the chrome dome (bald head) for a rock.
• More than 100-million Americans wear glasses.
• It took Leo Tolstoy six years to write "War & Peace"
• Paul Cezanne had a parrot who he taught to say, "Cezanne is a great painter."
• The British once went to war over a sailor's ear. It happened in 1739, when Britain launched hostilities against Spain because a Spanish officer had supposedly sliced off the ear of a ship's captain named Robert Jenkins.
• Picasso's full name was: Pablo Diego Jose Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santisma Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso.
• In the name of art, Chris Burden arranged to be shot by a friend while another person photographed the event. He sold the series of pictures to an art dealer.
• The world record for a photographic memory feat is held by a man in Burma who recited 16,000 pages of Buddhist canonical texts from memory.
• According to the US Government people have tried nearly 28,000 different ways to lose weight.
• During the reign of Catherine I of Russia, the rules for parties stipulated that no man was to get drunk before 9 o'clock and ladies weren't to get drunk at any hour.
• What occurs more often in December than any other month? Conception.
• Jane Barbie was the woman who did the voice recordings for the Bell System.
• The only real person to be a Pez head was Betsy Ross.
• Leontina Albina of San Antonio,Chile, gave birth to her 55th child in 1981, making her the world's most prolific mother.
• In 1799, physician John Ferriar noted the effect of dried leaves of the common foxglove plant, digitalis purpurea, on heart action. Still used in heart medications, digitalis slows the pulse and increases the force of heart contractions and the amount of blood pumped per heartbeat.
• The characters Bert and Ernie, on Sesame Street, were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "It's A Wonderful Life."
• How most of us spend our lives...
  • 25 years sleeping
  • 14 years at work and at school
  • 12 years watching TV
  • 5 years socializing
  • 3 years reading
  • 3 years eating
  • 2 years bathing and grooming
  • 1 year on the telephone
  • 10 months on the toilet
  • 5 months having sex
  • 10 years miscellaneous activity: housekeeping, shopping, waiting in lines, walking, driving, entertainment, and doing nothing
• John Walker, an English chemist, never patented the match (he invented it) because he thought it was too important to be anything but public property.
• Boys who have unusual first names are more likely to have mental problems than boys with common names. Girls don't seem to have this problem.
• If you're cold put a hat on. 80% of your body temperature escapes through your head.
• It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
• The record number of people crammed into a 1998 Volkswagen Bug and still able to close all doors is 18. They were college students.
• Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.
• Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age.
• The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
• Second hand tobacco smoke is the third leading preventable cause of death, after active tobacco smoking and alcohol use.
• More women (80%) wash their hands in the bathroom than men (55%).
• 37% of all women prefer shoe shopping to sex.
• A vast majority of married men sleep on the right hand side of the bed (facing from the headboard), regardless of race, creed or age. Divorced men often switch to the left side.
• Half of all Americans live within 50 miles of their birthplace.
• Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.
• John Lennon's first girlfriend was named Thelma Pickles.
• The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
• 1 in 8 people in have been employed by McDonald's in the US.
• The average U.S. high school graduate has a vocabulary of about 60,000 words.
• Joe Kittinger made the highest intentional skydive in history when in 1960 he jumped out of a balloon at 103,000 ft., and is the only person to have broken the sound barrier with his body alone.
• In 1968, Steve McPeak traveled from Chicago to Los Angeles on a unicycle. The trip took him six weeks.
• According to The Guinness Book of Records, the quickest picker-upper when it comes to beer is one Tom Gaskin, who in Northern Ireland in 1996 managed to lift a 137-pound keg over his head 902 times in only six hours.
• The alarm clock was not invented by the Marquis de Sade, as some suspect, but rather by a man named Levi Hutchins of Concord, New Hampshire, in 1787. Perversity, though, characterized his invention from the beginning. The alarm on his clock could ring only at 4 am.
• Henry David Thoreau, the author of "Walden" was also a pencil-maker.
• Quick-frozen food was marketed by a man named Birdseye.
• An organ company was created by a man named Hammond.
• The Marx Brothers went from Broadway to Hollywood.
• On an island in northern Wales there's a village called Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllandysiliogogogoch.
• Historically, only Hawaiian men danced the Hula.
• The credit card is rooted in the idea of allowing consumers to buy on time, which took hold in the 1920s. By the late 1940s, some department stores and gasoline companies had issued courtesy cards to their customers, granting them credit in advance of a purchase. Then, in 1950, businessman Francis Xavier McNamara was having lunch and discovered he had left his cash at home. He was so embarrassed that he invented the Diners Club, which issued a card good for meals, lodging and other travel expenses, the prototype for all future credit cards.
• U.S. President Calvin Coolidge (30th) was born on July 4, 1872. Presidents John Adams (2nd) and Thomas Jefferson (3rd) both died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. President James Monroe (8th) died on July 4, 1831.
• Mir Bahboob Ali Khan (1856-1911), 6th Nizam of Hyderabad and richest prince in India, never wore the same garment twice in his entire lifetime. His clothing, fashioned of fine white muslin, was worn once and then given to palace servants.
• Most deaths in a hospital are between the times of 4pm and 6pm, the time when the human body is at its weakest.
• Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
• Length of beard an average man would grow if he never shaved... 27.5 feet.
• Amount of time an average man spends shaving... 3350 hours.
• Number of whiskers on the face of the average man... 30,000.
• Number of inches whiskers grow per year... 5.5
• The average man sweats 2 1/2 quarts every day.
• Percentage of American women who say they would marry the same man... 50%
• According to a major hotel chain, approximately the same numbers of men and women are locked out of their rooms, 32 percent are less than fully dressed.
• In 1972, a group of scientists reported that you could cure the common cold by freezing the big toe.
• Flamenco dancer Jose Greco took out an insurance policy thorough Lloyd's of London against his pants splitting during a performance.
• The largest number of children born to one woman is recorded at 69. From 1725-1765 a Russian peasant woman gave birth to 16 sets of twins, 7 sets of triplets and 4 sets of quadruplets.
• Greatest Lovers in History...
  • King Solomon - Had 300 wives & hundreds of mistresses
  • Cleopatra - Took her first lover at age 12 and could allegedly take dozens of lovers a night
  • Empress Theodora - Took dozens of lovers each day
  • Queen Zingua - Had her lovers killed in the morning when she was through with them
  • Giovana Giacomo Cassanova - Seduced thousands of women, over 100 of them are recorded
  • Catherine The Great - An insomniac, consequently taking hundreds of lovers
  • Marquis De Sade -  Sadism is a term we get from his name, was put in an asylum for all his sex crimes
  • Mae West - Had an active sex life until her 80s, and had one lover that lasted for 15 hours
  • Mata Hari - Spy who slept her way to war secrets to kill over 50, 000 soldiers
  • Brigitte Bardot - Admitted that she "Must have a man every night"
• 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."
• 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.
• Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different.
• Jeanne Pierre Francois Blanchard built the first parachute and tested it using a dog. He put the dog in a basket equipped with his invention and then dropped it from a hot air balloon.
• Queen Victoria eased the discomfort of her menstrual cramps by having her doctor supply her with marijuana.
• Jimmy Carter was the first U.S. president to have been born in a hospital.
• There are 18 doctors in the US called Dr. Doctor, and one called Dr. Surgeon. There is also a dermatologist named Dr. Rash, a psychiatrist called Dr. Couch and an anesthesiologist named Dr Gass.
• In 1990, a 64-year old Hartsville, Tennessee, woman entered a hospital for surgery for what doctors diagnosed as a tumor on her buttocks. What surgeons found, however, was a four-inch pork chop bone, which they removed. They estimated that it had been in place for five to ten years. The woman could not remember sitting on it, or eating it for that matter.
• Electrical stimulation of certain areas of the brain can revive long-lost memories.
• The average person sheds 1 pound of skin a year
• According to the Texas Department of Transportation, one person is killed annually painting stripes on the state's highways and roads.
• Early Spanish missionaries in Texas hoped to encourage the spread of European values by offering flannel underwear to Native Americans.
• A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 69 years.
• The trick to curing hiccups is to get the nerves that regulate breathing synchronized.

1.      Hold your breath as long as you can, then exhale very gradually.

2.      Deep slow breathing.

3.      Nonstop, slow sipping of a glass of warm water.

4.      Taking a teaspoon of granulated sugar.

• Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin.
• St. Augustine was the first major proponent of the "missionary" position.
• Lizzie Borden was acquitted.
• Alexander Hamilton was shot by Aaron Burr in the groin.
• Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-decimal category.
• Roger Ebert is the only film critic to have ever won the Pulitzer prize.
• A scholar who studies the Marquis de Sade is called a Sadian, not a Sadist (of course).
• Tribeca in Manhattan stands for TRIangle BElow CAnal street. Soho stands for SOuth of HOuston street.
• The average person laughs 15 times a day.
• In Bangladesh, kids as young as 15 can be jailed for cheating on their finals.
• 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.
• In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.
• Most people speak at about 60 words per minute, which is about a word a second, if you get really excited you might get to 120/150 words per minute. Steve Woodmore holds the current World Record for fast talking, he can speak at 637 words per minute, which is 10.25 words per second.
• Ancient Egyptians slept on pillows made of stone.
• George Washington was the first Irish US President
• Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.
• One in eight women and one in seven men will have an affair within the first two years of marriage.
• State with the Highest Divorce Rate.. Texas
• Thomas Edison, light bulb inventor, was afraid of the dark.
• There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.
• Alaska has the highest percentage of people who walk to work.
• Most Common Last Names in the United States...

0.      Smith

1.      Johnson

2.      Williams

3.      Brown

4.      Jones

5.      Miller

6.      Davis

7.      Wilson

8.      Anderson

9.      Taylor

• In space, astronauts cannot cry, because there is no gravity, so the tears can't flow.
• About 3000 years ago, most Egyptians died by the time they were 30.
• More people use blue toothbrushes than red ones.
• Vincent Van Gogh committed suicide while painting Wheat Field with Crows.
• Martha Washington had the equivalent of 6 million dollars when she married George
• Left-handedness is extremely common in twins. It is unusual, however, for both to be left-handed.
• Most deaths in a hospital are between the times of 4pm and 6pm, the time when the human body is at its weakest.
• There are 10 doctors in the U.S. with the last name of 'Nurse'.
• More than half the American men surveyed in a recent poll admit to having sex with women they disliked.
• Hitler named the new Germany the Third Reich, promising a link to the glory of the country's past. ("Reich" is German for empire.) The first Reich was the medieval Holy Roman Empire, which united much of what is now Germany and Italy. The second was created by Otto Von Bismarck in 1871. The Fuhrer promised that his Third Reich would last 1,000 years. But it died along with the master race in 1945, in the ruins of Berlin, after a mere twelve.
• Money man Cornelius Vanderbilt was an insomniac and a believer in the occult. He was not able to fall asleep unless each leg of his bed was planted in a dished filled with salt. He felt this kept out the evil spirits.
• Neil Sedaka's 1959 hit "Oh Carol" was about singer Carole King.
• A sneeze travels out your mouth at over 100 m.p.h.
• The human heart creates enough pressure while pumping to squirt blood 30 feet.
• Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.
• There are more collect calls on Father's Day than any other day of the year.
• More people are killed by donkeys annually than are killed in plane crashes.
• Marilyn Monroe had six toes.
• Nevada has the highest alcohol consumption level (4.85 gallons per person per year, New Hampshire is #2, Alaska is #3)
• 35.5% of Mississippi residents over the age of 25 have not finished high school (Alaska is the best state with only 13.4%)
• 30.7% of the adult residents in Mississippi are overweight (Colorado & Wyoming are the lowest, 18.4%)
• Being too thin is as dangerous to your health as being too fat.
• Most Common New Year Resolutions...