Random (useless) Facts

The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.

The housefly hums in the middle octave, key of F.

Wilma Flintstone's maiden name was Wilma Slaghoopal, and Betty Rubble's
Maiden name was Betty Jean Mcbricker.

A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots.

The band Duran Duran got their name from an astronaut in the 1968 Jane
Fonda movie "Barbarella.

Cleo and Caesar were the early stage names of Cher and Sonny Bono.

A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.

If your eyes are six feet above the surface of the ocean, the horizon
will be about three statute miles away.

The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English
Dictionary, is "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis". The only
other word with the same amount of letters is
"pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses", its plural. 

"Hydroxydesoxycorticosterone" and "hydroxydeoxycorticosterones" are the
largest anagrams.

Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los
Angeles de Porciuncula."

Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older

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

Ben and Jerry's send 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 company providing the liability insurance for the Republican National
Convention in San Diego is the same firm that insured the maiden voyage
of the RMS Titanic.

Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.

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."

The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.

The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II
killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

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

The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharaoh Ramses II who
fathered over 160 children.

If NASA sent birds into space they would soon die, they need gravity to
swallow.

Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood
donors.

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"

It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog
throws up its stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of its mouth. 
Then the frog uses its forearms to dig out all of the stomach's contents and 
then swallows the stomach back down again.

Armored knights raised their visors to identify themselves when they rode
past their king. This custom has become the modern military salute.

White Out was invented by the mother of Mike Nesmith (Formerly of the
Monkees)

Sylvia Miles had the shortest performance ever nominated for an Oscar
with "Midnight Cowboy." Her entire role lasted only six minutes.

Charles Lindbergh took only four sandwiches with him on his famous
transatlantic flight.

Goethe couldn't stand the sound of barking dogs and could only write if
he had an apple rotting in the drawer of his desk.

If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the
air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air,
the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse hasall 
four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

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.  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.

In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.

Playing cards were issued to British pilots in WWII. If captured, they could 
be soaked in water and unfolded to reveal a map for escape.

The "L.L." in L.L. Bean stands for Leon Leonwood.

Ivory bar soap floating was a mistake. They had been overmixing the soap 
formula causing excess air bubbles that made it float. Customers wrote and 
told how much they loved that it floated, and it has floated ever since.

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.

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.

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

The Sanskrit word for "war" means "desire for more cows."

A walla-walla scene is one where extras pretend to be talking in the 
background -- when they say "walla-walla" it looks like they are actually 
talking.

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.

'Stewardesses' is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.

The Baby Ruth candy bar was actually named after Grover Cleveland's baby
daughter, Ruth.

A whale's penis is called a dork.

Armadillos have four babies at a time and they are always all the same sex.

Armadillos are the only animal besides humans that can get leprosy.

To escape the grip of a crocodile's jaws, push your thumbs into its eyeballs --
it will let you go instantly.

Reindeer like to eat bananas.

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 geese is called a gaggle.
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.

Physicist Murray Gell-Mann named the sub-atomic particles known as quarks
for a random line in James Joyce, "Three quarks for Muster Mark!"

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

The phrase "sleep tight" derives from the fact that early mattresses were
filled with straw and held up with rope stretched across the bedframe. A tight
sleep was a comfortable sleep.

"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.

In the 1940s, the FCC assigned television's Channel 1 to mobile services 
(two-way radios in taxicabs, for instance) but did not re-number the other 
channel assignments. That is why your TV set has channels 2 and up, but no 
channel 1.

The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments

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

The combination "ough" can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following 
sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman 
strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he 
coughed and hiccoughed."


The verb "cleave" is the only English word with two synonyms which are 
antonyms of each other: adhere and separate.


The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is 
uncopyrightable.

Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does 
arsenious, meaning "containing arsenic."

The shape of plant collenchyma cells and the shape of the bubbles in beer foam 
are the same - they are orthotetrachidecahedrons.

The word 'pound' is abbreviated 'lb.' after the constellation 'libra' because 
it means 'pound' in Latin, and also 'scales'. The abbreviation for the British 
Pound Sterling comes from the same source: it is an 'L' for Libra/Lb. with a 
stroke through it to indicate abbreviation.  Sames goes for the Italian lira 
which uses the same abbreviation ('lira' coming from 'libra'). So British
currency (before it went metric) was always quoted as "pounds/shillings/pence", 
abbreviated "L/s/d" (libra/solidus/denarius).

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.

The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which 
means "the king is dead".

Pinocchio is Italian for "pine head."

Camel's milk does not curdle.

In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.

An animal epidemic is called an epizootic.

Murphy's Oil Soap is the chemical most commonly used to clean elephants.

The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used.

Blueberry Jelly Bellies were created especially for Ronald Reagan.

All porcupines float in water.

Did you know that there are coffee flavored PEZ?

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.

St. Stephen is the patron saint of bricklayers.

The first song played on Armed Forces Radio during operation Desert Shield 
was "Rock the Casba" by the Clash.

The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when 
the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor 
and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.

Non-dairy creamer is flammable.

The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the "American Pie."
(Thus the name of the Don McLean song.)

Texas is also the only state that is allowed to fly its state flag at the 
same height as the U.S. flag.

The only nation who's name begins with an "A", but doesn't end in an "A" is 
Afghanastan.

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.

The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because 
when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the 
books that would occupy the building.

Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. 
Spades - King David, Clubs - Alexander the Great, Hearts - Charlemagne, and 
Diamonds - Julius Caesar.