Did You Know …? Compiled by Mart Schnd

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“Did You Know…?” provides you some fun and interesting facts of life. These were collected

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“Did You Know…?” provides you some fun and interesting facts of life. These were collected

from various sources. While attempts have been made to verify information in this

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Mart Schnd.

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

1. 20% of the population experiences snoring problems. Males and obese people

have more problems with snoring. Snoring tends to be louder when a person

sleeps on their back. There are more than 300 devices registered in the U.S.

Patent and Trademark Office to help cure snoring.

2. “60 Minutes” is the only TV program that has no theme song.

Source: Yahoo.com

3. A 1989 law in Florida forbids the release of more than ten lighter-than-air

balloons at a time. This is to protect marine creatures that often mistake balloons

for food and can suffer intestinal injuries if they eat the balloons.

4. A 1993 Florida law levies fines against anyone caught intentionally littering with

plastic fishing gear or lines.

5. A baby partridge is called a “cheeper.”

Source: UselessKnowledge.com

6. A baked ham has graced traditional Easter tables in America for centuries. The

tradition of ham served at Easter dates back to the 1600s. The colonists got the

idea from their Native American neighbors. Every year the Native Americans

welcomed spring with a planting festival that included the practice of smoking

meats, especially venison. The colonists were fascinated with the process and

decided to try it on the hogs they had raised. They salted, smoked, and stored the

meat through the winter until it was perfectly cured and ready for the table in the

spring, just in time for Easter.

7. A ball hitting the foul pole at Yankee Stadium in the 1930s was in play, not a

homer.

8. A ballet enthusiast is called a balletomane.

9. A bee could travel 4 million miles (6.5 million km) at 7 mph (11 km/h) on the

energy it would obtain from 1 gallon (3.785 liters) of nectar.

10. A bee has five eyes, two large compound eyes on both sides of its head, and three

ocelli (primitive eyes) on top of its head to detect light intensity.

11. A bride stands to the groom’s left at a wedding so that his sword hand would be

free. Apparently Anglo-Saxon brides were often kidnapped before a wedding and

brawls were common. That’s also why the best man stands with the groom; the

tribe’s best warrior was there to help the groom defend the bride.

12. A building in which silence is enforced, like a library or school room, is referred

to as a “silentium.”

13. A bumble bee flaps its wings 160 beats per second.

14. A charming wedding custom in early Yorkshire, England, involved a plate holding

wedding cake. It was thrown out of the window as the bride returned to her

parental home after the wedding. If the plate broke, she would enjoy a happy

future with her husband. If the plate remained intact, her future was bleak.

15. A cockroach’s heart is nothing but a simple tube with valves. The tube can pump

blood backwards and forwards in the insect. The heart can even stop moving,

apparently without harming the roach.

16. A colony of white-footed ants varies in size from 400,000 to over 1 million

individuals.

17. A common housefly is faster--in one sense--than a jet airplane. The fly moves 300

times its body length in one second, while the jet, at the speed of sound, travels

100 times its body length in one second.

18. A concert promoter in Hawaii sold a thousand tickets to a Spice Girls concert.

Unfortunately the concert was never scheduled. The man was arrested and told

police he needed the money for a nose job and a sex change.

19. A conveyor printing press is used to print the tiny white M’s on each M&M candy.

Because the peanut sizes vary, the press must be always adjusted to prevent

smashing the peanuts in peanut M&Ms. Regular M&Ms, all the same size, are

much easier to send through the printer.

20. A couple living together for two years in Russia is considered married. This is

called a citizen marriage.

21. A cricket an inch long has a chirp that is audible for nearly a mile.

22. A crocodile weighing 120 pounds exerts a force of about 1,540 pounds between its

jaws. A human being’s jaws exert a force of only 40 to 80 pounds.

23. A diet of dead pink flamingoes has changed the color of Kenyan baboons’ coats

from grey to reddish brown.

Source: ColorMatters.com

24. A dinner party consisting of 13 people in England during the Middle Ages was the

worst of omens. It foretold of the impending death of one in the group. This was

associated with the Last Supper, and also with a witches coven, as both had 13

members.

25. A “distich” is composed of two poetic lines matching both sound and sense. It is

used during the Chinese New Year to express the people’s wish for a peaceful and

happy new year.

26. A fantasia is a piece of music in which the composition follows the fancy, rather

than any conventional form, of an improvisational character.

27. A female peacock is called a “peahen.”

Source: St. Peters University

28. A few years back, a Chinese soap hit it big with consumers in Asia. It was claimed

in ads that users would lose weight with Seaweed Defat Scented Soap simply by

washing with it. The soap was sold in violation to the Japanese Pharmaceutical

Affairs Law and was banned. Reportedly, the craze for the soap was so great that

Japanese tourists from China and Hong Kong brought back large quantities. The

product was also in violation of customs regulations. In June and July 1999 alone,

more than 10,000 bars were seized.

29. A Firkin is a British measurement usually equal to a quarter barrel.

Source: Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary

30. A four month old fetus will startle and turn away if a bright light is flashed on it’s

mother’s belly. Babies in the womb will also react to sudden loud noises, even if

their mother’s ears are muffled.

31. A hummingbird weighs less than a penny.

Source: Encarta.com

32. A law in Illinois prohibits barbers from using their fingers to apply shaving cream

to a patron’s face.

33. A local ordinance in Atwoodville, Connecticut prohibits people from playing

Scrabble while waiting for a politician to speak.

34. A midden is a pile of trash left over from the kitchen or dinner table.

35. A quick slant pass was the play U.S. President Richard Nixon suggested Miami

Dolphins’ coach Don Shula use in Super Bowl VI. (The play resulted in an

incompletion; the Dolphins went on to lose the game to the Dallas Cowboys, 24-

3.)

Source: Nixon and Sports Chronology

36. A racehorse averages a weight loss of between 15 and 25 pounds during a race.

37. A rod is equal to 16-1/2 feet; 320 rods equal one mile.

Source: Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary

38. A shofar is a ram’s horn used in ancient times as a signaling trumpet, and is still

blown in synagogues on Rosh Hashana and at the end of Yom Kippur.

39. A spider web weighing only once ounce is so thin; it could reach from New York

to Paris.

40. A turkey should never be carved until it has been out of the oven at least 30

minutes. This permits the inner cooking to subside and the internal meat juices to

stop running. Once the meat sets, it’s easier to carve clean, neat slices.

41. A virtual underwater playground with its breathtaking coral, the Philippines

draws thousands of divers from Japan, China, and Taiwan each year.

42. A zarzuela is an operetta of a traditional type, with spoken dialogue and lyrical

music. The word is derived from the Spanish after La Zarzuela, the royal palace

near Madrid where the operetta was first performed in 1629. A zarzuela is also the

name of a seafood stew.

43. ABC-TV’s Monday Night Football premiered in September 1970. Its three original

commentators were Keith Jackson, Don Meredith, and Howard Cosell.

44. About one fifth of Australia is covered by its eleven deserts.

45. Abraham Lincoln was the first recognizable person whose likeness appeared on a

regularly issued US coin.

Source: Encarta.com

46. According to a 1999 survey conducted by the National Sleep Foundation, of those

people who snore, 19 percent snore so loudly that they can be heard through a

closed door.

47. According to a recent Gallup poll, 11 percent of the U.S. population believes in

ghosts and other supernatural entities.

48. According to a recent poll, people named the racecar as their favorite Monopoly

token. (Least favorite token is the wheelbarrow.)

Source: Monopoly.com

49. According to Beatles producer George Martin, Neal Hefti’s catchy composition of

the 1960s Batman Emmy-winning theme song inspired George Harrison to write

the hit song “Taxman.”

50. According to Greek myth, Athena sprang full-formed from the forehead of her

father, Zeus.

Source: Bullfinch’s Mythology

51. According to Margaret Jones, author of a Patsy Cline biography, there are a dozen

places in Virginia that could claim to be the hometown of the nomadic Cline. Her

family moved 19 times before she was 15.

52. According to several sources, country singer Tammy Wynette was born Wynette

Pugh.

53. According to sources, singer John Denver’s real name was Henry John

Deutschendorf, Jr.

54. According to the National Safety Council, coffee is not successful at sobering up a

drunken person, and in many cases it may actually increase the adverse effects of

alcohol.

Source: CoolQuiz.com

55. According to the rules of Gaelic football, players may punch the ball, but the

punching motion must be clearly visible to the referee. Players may not pick up

the ball off the ground unless they first get their toe under the ball.

56. Actor Jeremy Irons provides the voice of the narrator for Spaceship Earth at

Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida.

57. Actor Robert Mitchum served time on a Georgia chain gang as a teenager. He had

been arrested for vagrancy.

58. Actor Rudolph Valentino was often credited in his movies as Rudolph Valentine.

For his first credited film role in the 1917 “Alimony”, he was paid $5.00 per day

during shooting.

59. Actor Walter Matthau’s father was an Eastern Rite Catholic priest in Czarist

Russia.

60. Actress DIANE LANE struggled to keep a straight face while filming

UNFAITHFUL with RICHARD GERE - when rising air bubbles from her co-star’s

underwear disrupted a bath-tub love scene. The bubbling sound was reportedly so

loud they had to re-record some of their dialogue.

61. Actress Judy Garland was 16 yeas old when she filmed “The Wizard of Oz” in

1939.

62. Advertisements for coffee in London in 1657 claimed that the beverage was a cure

for scurvy, gout and other ills.

63. Aerosmith used to like to bring chainsaws with them on tour so they could hack

up hotel rooms easier. They also traveled with extra-long extension cords, so that

the televisions they tossed out windows would keep playing until they hit the

ground.

64. Aerosmith went berserk on their first Japanese tour. On opening night, they

destroyed the backstage area when they found turkey roll on the buffet table.

Lead singer Steven Tyler commented, - explicitly said “No turkey roll.”

65. Aerosmith’s “Dude Looks like a Lady,” was written about Vince Neil of Motley

Crue.

66. After a concert, Van Halen’s David Lee Roth would sit in the door of their tour

bus and have the road manager douse his feet in Perrier.

67. Albert Einstein was once offered the position of President of Israel. He declined

saying he did not have a head for human problems.

68. All English monarchs since William the Conqueror (1066) have been crowned in

Westminster Abbey.

Source: Encarta.com

69. Although the mistletoe is considered to be the seed of love, the common name of

the plant is derived from the ancient belief that mistletoe grew from bird

droppings. This strange belief was related to the ancient principle that life could

spring spontaneously from dung.

70. Although there are 30,000 species of edible plants, 90 percent of the world’s food

comes from just 20 of them.

Source: New York Daily News

71. Americans consume more than 353 million pounds of turkey during National

Turkey Lovers’ Month in June. By comparison, more than 675 million pounds of

turkey will be consumed at Thanksgiving.

72. Among other well-known names, a group of fish can also be called a draught.

73. Amphibians’ eyes come in a variety shapes and sizes. Some even have square- or

heart-shaped pupils.

74. Amphibians see no color; they perceive only black and white.

75. An average household in America will mail out 28 Christmas cards each year and

see 28 eight cards return in their place.

76. An elementary rule of mushroom collecting is never to place edible and poisonous

specimens together. The slightest touch may contaminate.

77. An estimated 10,000 million of the 100,000 million stars in our galaxy have died

and produced white dwarfs.

78. An old folk custom for selecting a husband from several suitors involved taking

onions and writing each suitor’s name individually on each. Then all the onions

were put in a cool dark storeroom. The first onion to grow sprouts would

determine which man the undecided maiden should marry.

Source: CoolQuiz.com

79. An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.

Source: Bizzarro

80. Antarctica is 98% ice, 2% barren rock. The average thickness of the ice sheet is

7,200 feet; this amounts to 90% of all the ice and 70% of all the fresh water in the

world. If the ice cap were to melt, the sea level would rise by an average of 230

feet.

81. Ants can survive being “nuked” in a microwave? Microwave ovens have patterns

of standing waves, with hot, very high-density areas, and cold, very low-density

areas. Ants in the oven seek out the cold areas, and dodge the hot ones.

82. Anwar Sadat becomes first Arab leader to visit Israel on November 19th, 1977.

Source: Encyclopedia.com

83. Arguably the largest state in the world, Western Australia covers one-third of the

Australian continent. It spans over 2.5 million square kilometers (1 million

square miles).

84. Arthur Murray, of dancing instruction fame, was born Moses Teichman.

Source: Britannica.com

85. Artist Xavier Roberts first designed his soon-to-be-famous Cabbage Patch dolls in

1977 to help pay his way through school. They had soft faces and were made by

hand, as opposed to the hard-faced mass-market dolls, and were originally called

“Little People.”

86. As early as 1822, the postmaster in Washington, D.C. was worried by the amount

of extra mail at Christmas time. His preferred solution to the problem was to

limit by law the number of cards a person could send. Even though commercial

cards were not available at that time, people were already sending so many home-

made cards that sixteen extra postmen had to be hired in the city.

87. As recently as half a century ago, there was no clear understanding as to why the

sun shines. The discovery that it is due to nuclear-fusion reactions was not made

until the 1930s, by Hans Beth and Carl von Weizsacker.

88. As valedictorian for her high school, actress Jodie Foster delivered her graduation

speech in French.

89. As you might have suspected, the grave of Elvis Presley at Graceland in Memphis

is the most visited grave site in the world, with more than 700,000 visitors

annually.

Source: Guinness World Records 2000

90. At greatest risk of injury to a professional football player’s anatomy is the knee,

which is involved in 58 percent of all major football injuries.

91. At one time it was believed that citrus fruits could provide protection against

poisons.

92. At the 1952 Olympic Games, Russian gymnast Maria Gorokhovskaya won an

overall record seven medals.

93. At the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Tom Malchow was the youngest

member of the U.S. men’s swim team at age 19. Malchow was humorously

nicknamed “Puppy Chow” by his older teammates. Four years later, at the

Olympics in Sydney, he was the 200-meter butterfly gold medallist. Malchow’s

time of 1:55.35 was the third- fastest performance ever. His nickname changed to

“Top Dog” and “Big Dog.”

94. Attila the Hun died of a nosebleed on his wedding night in A.D. 453.

95. Australia is divided into two territories and six states.

96. Australia is the smallest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent in the World. It

is the only country which is also a whole continent -- 18.6 million people live

here.

97. Australia’s Ayers Rock is the largest rock in the world. It rises out of the middle of

the country with a diameter of 5½ miles around its base and a height of 1,000

feet.

98. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef stretches for 1,242 miles along the coast of

Queensland. It is a chain of small islands and more than 2,500 reefs.

99. Australian swimmer Murray Rose won six Olympic medals and was the first man

to swim the 1,500-metre freestyle in less than 18 minutes. He won national titles

in three countries: the United States, Canada, and Australia. At age 17 in 1956,

Rose became the youngest Olympian to win three gold medals during one

Olympics.

100. Australia’s city of Sydney began as a penal colony in 1788; for the next 60 years, it

received the criminal and persecuted people of British society.

101. Australia’s highest mountain is named for Thaddeus Kosciusko, the Polish

general who fought in the American Revolution.

102. “Baby-cut” carrots aren’t baby carrots. They’re actually full-sized ones peeled and

polished down to size. And there’s nothing small about their current popularity:

about 25 percent of California’s fresh carrot crop is turned into “babies.”

103. Bananas aren’t grown on trees. They’re part of the lily family, a cousin of the

orchid, nothing but a very yellow and plump member of the herb family. With

stalks 25 feet high, they’re the largest plant on earth without a woody stem.

104. Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.

Source: Bizzarro

105. Bangladesh is the most densely populated non-island region in the world, with

more than 1,970 humans per square mile.

106. Bart Simpson is allergic to two things: butterscotch and imitation butterscotch.

Source: The Simpsons

107. Because of a football’s resemblance to an olive, albeit a very large one, the

Chinese often call the American game of football “olive ball.”

108. Because of fears that the Japanese, who had attacked Pearl Harbor less than a

month earlier, might attach California, the Rose Bowl game of 1942 between

Oregon State and Duke University was moved east to Duke’s hometown in

Durham, North Carolina. It didn’t, however, help the home team. Oregon won,

20-16.

109. Because of the outbreak of major world wars, the modern Olympics did not hold

competitions in 1916, 1940, and 1944.

110. Because of their extreme elasticity, the lungs are 100 times easier to blow up than

a child’s toy balloon.

111. Beethoven’s music teachers pronounced him hopeless as a composer when he was

a child.

112. Beets reminded early cooks of a bleeding animal when they cut them open, so

they started calling them “beets.” This was derived from the French word bête,

meaning “beast.”

113. Before deciding to try a career in films and television, actor-director-producer

Michael Douglas earned a B.A. in pre-law from the University of California at

Santa Barbara.

114. Before going into the music business, Frank Zappa was a greeting-card designer.

115. Before settling on “Cornhuskers” in 1899, the University of Nebraska’s nicknames

were Treeplanters, Rattlesnake Boys, Antelopes, Old Gold Knights and the

Bugeaters.

Source: ESPN.com

116. Before Wally “Famous” Amos became a well-known cookie mogul in the 1970s

and 1980s, he worked for a time as a William Morris talent agent.

117. Bela Lugosi’s last movie role was a bit part in the Ed Wood “classic,” “Glen or

Glenda.”

Source: Quizland.com

118. Ben Franklin wanted the turkey, not the eagle, to be the U.S. national symbol. He

considered the eagle a “bird of bad moral character” because it lives “by sharping

and robbing.”

119. Bhutan is derived from the Indian word Bhotanta, meaning “the edge of Tibet.” It

is located in Asia near the southern fringes of the eastern Himalayas.

120. “Big cheese” and “big wheel” are medieval terms of envious respect for those who

could afford to buy whole wheels of cheese at a time, an expense few could enjoy.

Both these terms are often used sarcastically today.

121. Birds may travel great distances on their migrations. The Arctic Tern travels from

the top of the world - the Arctic, to the bottom - the Antarctic, round trip in a

single year - 25,000 miles in all!

122. Boastful Chicagolanders and not atmospheric conditions were the reason the

Chicago bears the sobriquet “The Windy City.”

Source: About.com

123. Bombyx mori, a silkworm moth, has been cultivated for so long that it can no

longer exist without human care. Because it has been domesticated, it has lost the

ability to fly.

124. Boston-native figure skater Tenley Albright was the first American woman to win

an Olympic figure-skating gold medal. In 1952, Albright placed second in

women’s figure skating at the Olympic Games. She was the U.S. national

championship from 1952 to 1956. In 1953, Albright became the first American

woman to win the world championship title. She won the title again in 1955. At

the 1956 Olympics, Albright won the gold medal in women’s figure skating. She

was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1988. After retiring, Albright

became a surgeon.

125. Box-office champ Toy Story (1995) is said to be filled with subtle inside jokes.

One is in the name of the evil boy who lives next door to Andy and the toys. Sid

Phillips, the wicked boy, was reportedly inspired by a former Pixar employee of

the same last name who was known to disassemble toys and use the parts to build

bizarre creations.

126. Brazil shares a common border with all South American countries, except

Ecuador and Chile.

127. Breakfast cereal traces its roots to ancient Greece, where people flavored cooked

grains with olive oil and lamb gravy.

Source: The Junk Food Companion

128. Buddy Holly’s 1957 smash hit “That’ll Be the Day” took its title from a line of

John Wayne’s dialogue in the western epic The Searchers.

Source: That Crazy, Kooky Internet Thing.

129. Bugs hold special places in the hearts of many Japanese, who often keep crickets,

beetles and fireflies as pets. Their calls are considered soothing and remind the

nature-loving Japanese of a simpler, less hectic age.

130. Bullet proof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers and laser printers were all

invented by women.

Source: Yahoo.com

131. Burger King® uses approximately 1/2 million pounds of bacon every month in its

restaurants.

132. Burt Reynolds, the Number 1 actor at the box office for five years in a row (1978

through 1982), relinquished his cinema crown to Clint Eastwood in 1983.

133. Butterflies taste with their feet.

Source: Bizzarro

134. By the end of the 1500s, women preferred to wear their purse pouches under their

skirts.

135. California Sea otters spend almost all of their time in the water. Alaska Sea otters

often sleep, groom, and nurse on land.

136. Camel hair brushes are actually made of squirrel hair.

137. Canada’s first Olympic gold medal was won by a man competing for the United

States. George Orton of Strathroy, Ontario, took first place in the steeplechase at

the 1900 Olympics in Paris, but because Canada didn’t have an official team, he

entered as part of the American team instead.

138. Candy canes began as straight white sticks of sugar candy used to decorate the

Christmas trees. A choirmaster at Cologne Cathedral decided have the ends bent

to depict a shepherd’s crook and he would pass them out to the children to keep

them quiet during the services. It wasn’t until about the 20th century that candy

canes acquired their red stripes.

139. Carolus Linnaeus, the Swedish genius who devised the naming system of living

things, was a fervent believer in sea monsters, citing numerous reports of

fishermen.

140. Carrie Donovan, former fashion editor who has written for “The New York

Times,” “Vogue,” and “Harper’s Bazaar,” was featured for the first time in April

1997 in Old Navy ads in “The New York Times.” She is the older blondish woman

with the big round glasses, known in the New York fashion industry, but

apparently not as well known elsewhere.

141. Carrots were first grown as a medicine not a food. The Ancient Greeks called

carrots “Karoto”.

142. Catherine de Medici was the first woman in Europe to use tobacco. She took it in

a mixture of snuff.

143. Catherine II of Russia kept her wigmaker in an iron cage in her bedroom for more

than three years.

144. Caviar, or fish eggs, contains the same healthful omega-3 fatty acids as salmon.

145. Celebrities who were school dropouts include Lucille Ball, Glen Campbell, Jim

Carrey, Cher, Carrie Fisher, Cary Grant, Billy Joel, Rod McKuen, Al Pacino, and

Peter Ustinov.

146. Celery has negative calories — it takes more calories to eat and digest a piece of

celery than the celery has in it initially.

147. Cellophane noodles must typically be soaked before using, as must dried porcini

mushrooms and most dried beans.

148. Centuries ago, men were told that the evil effects of coffee would make them

sterile; women were cautioned to avoid caffeine unless they wanted to be barren.

149. Ceylon became a republic in 1972 and changed its name to Sri Lanka.

150. Charlie Brown’s hero, Joe Schlabotnik, was fired as manager of the Waffletown

Syrups for calling a squeeze play with no one on base.

Source: QuantumStats.com

151. Childhood ice figure-skating partners JoJo Starbuck and Ken Shelley made

skating history when, in 1968, they were the youngest pairs team America had

ever sent to the Olympic Games.

152. Children have more sensitive ears than adults. They can hear a larger variety of

sounds.

153. China is home to 20 percent of the world’s population and consumes 30 percent

of the world’s cigarettes.

Source: The New York Times

154. China produces about 70 percent of the world’s silk supply.

155. Chocolate doesn’t cause acne. Experiments conducted at the University of

Pennsylvania and the U.S. Naval Academy found that consumption of chocolate -

even frequent daily dietary intake - had no effect on the incidence of acne.

Professional dermatologists no longer link acne with diet.

156. Christmas trees are edible. Many parts of pines, spruces and firs can be eaten:

The needles are a good source of Vitamin C; pine nuts and pine cones are also a

good source of nutrition.

Source: About.com

157. Coca Cola was originally colored green.

Source: The Junk Food Companion

158. “Colonial goose” is the name Australians give to stuffed mutton.

159. Comedian JAY LENO’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is on the exact same

spot he once got arrested by police for vagrancy when he was a struggling comic.

160. Cook’s Illustrated conducted blind taste testings of vanillas, and the staff was

surprised to find that, in baked goods, expensive, aromatic vanillas performed

almost exactly the same as the cheaper brands of real vanilla. The differences

virtually disappeared during cooking.

161. “Court bouillon” is a broth made by cooking various vegetables and herbs,

traditionally used for poaching fish, seafood, or vegetables.

162. Cowboy singer Rex Allen narrated more than 80 Walt Disney films.

163. Cultured Christmas trees must be shaped as they grow to produce fuller foliage.

To slow the upward growth and to encourage branching, they are hand-clipped in

each spring. Trees grown in the wild have sparser branches, and are known in the

industry as “Charlie Brown” trees.

164. Cut-outs of a moon and a star were used in colonial times on outhouse doors to

designate the gender of the intended user. Originally, the moon cut-out was for

women and the star was for the men. But men’s outhouses were usually such a

mess that men preferred using the women’s outhouses. So, eventually the uses of

stars were phased out.

165. Death Valley in southern California is the lowest point in the United States at 282

feet below sea level. The highest point in the contiguous 48 states is also in

California: Mount Whitney, which is 14,491 feet above sea level.

166. Designer Gabrielle “Coco” Channel introduced her first perfume in 1921. She gave

it the name “Channel No. 5.” According to Channel, she jumped straight to

number five because it was her lucky number. To add luck to the fragrance, she

introduced it on the fifth day of May, the fifth month. Channel No. 5 became the

world’s best selling perfume.

167. Despite its current energy woes, California is second only to Rhode Island in

energy conservation.

Source: BarbraStreisand.com

168. Despite its great strength, the octopus tires easily. The oxygen-carrying

component of its blood, hemocyanin, is copper-based and is less efficient than the

iron-based hemoglobin of humans. Therefore, a struggling octopus will quickly go

into oxygen deprivation, and becomes lethargic.

169. Despite its hump, a camel has a straight spine.

170. Despite its reputation for being finicky, the average cat consumes about 127,750

calories a year, nearly 28 times its own weight in food and the same amount again

in liquids. In case you were wondering, cats cannot survive on a vegetarian diet.

171. Despite man’s fear and hatred of the wolf, it has not ever been proved that a non-

rabid wolf ever attacked a human.

172. Despite the fact that Tom Seaver, David Cone, Dwight Gooden, Jerry Koosman,

Mike Scott, and Nolan Ryan wore their uniform at one time or another, no New

York Mets pitcher has ever pitched a no-hit game.

173. Despite the strong presence of Latino baseball players since the 1940s, Armando

Rodriguez in 1974 and Rich Garcia in 1975, both in the American League, were

the first Hispanic umpires in the majors.

174. “Destroying angel,” one of several poisonous Amanita mushrooms that grow wild

in forests and fields, has an innocent appearance. It is, however, highly lethal.

Even a small bite of this beautiful white mushroom can cause, hours later, violent

stomach-ache, a breakdown of blood cells, and finally death.

175. Developed in Egypt about 5,000 years ago, the greyhound breed was known

before the ninth century in England, where it was bred by aristocrats to hunt such

small game as hares. Today, the dog is widely used in racing.

176. Diamond Head Crater is Hawaii’s most famous landmark. The United States Army

built a trail up the crater in 1908, and added bunkers during World War II. The

trail passes through an old gun emplacement.

177. Dinosaurs lived on Earth for around 165 million years before they became extinct.

178. Discovering two photographs of nude women among the film’s more than 110,000

frames, Disney Studios recalled 3.4 million copies of the kiddie home video

release of The Rescuers (1977), featuring the voices of Bob Newhart and Eva

Gabor.

179. Disney World in Florida was opened to the public in 1971. The amusement park

was the largest in the world, set within 28,000 acres. It required a $400-million

investment, and did not do well during the first year it was opened. Only 10,000

people visited Disney World during that initial year. With time, however, the

attendance numbers rose to more than 10,000 people an hour.

180. Disney World in Orlando, Florida, covers 30,500 acres (46 square miles) making

it twice the size of the island of Manhattan, New York.

181. Disney’s animated film Mulan did not do well in China. Many Chinese, especially

the elderly, complained that the title character looked too Western.

182. Disney’s Matterhorn was the first roller coaster to run on steel tubes, which made

the ride smoother while allowing Disney to build longer-lasting coasters faster

and cheaper.

183. Disney’s Mickey Mouse was featured on cereal boxes for the Post cereal Toasties

corn flakes back in 1935.

184. Disney’s Mulan was the first feature length production created by Walt Disney

Feature Animation, Florida, located at Disney/MGM Studios at Walt Disney

World.

185. Disorders in the brain can distort odors. Epileptics sometimes get auras of

strange odors just before a seizure.

186. Diversionary props such as the falcon in the “Maltese Falcon,” or the glowing

briefcase in “Pulp Fiction,” are known as “McGuffins.” The word was coined by

Alfred Hitchcock, a true master of the form.

Source: Ask Yahoo!

187. Dolphins have the best sense of hearing amongst all the animals. They are able to

hear 14 times better than humans.

188. Donald Duck comics were nearly banned years ago in Finland because he didn’t

wear pants.

189. Dr. King was a champion of the civil rights movement. He led people in the

struggle against racism, prejudice and segregation laws, trying to secure equal

treatment and respect for all. He was arrested 30 times for his activities. A huge

number --- 250,000 --- of fellow activists and others turned out in the march on

Washington, D.C. in 1963. It was at this rally that Dr. King presented his “I Have

a Dream” speech, hypothesizing on an ideal world where skin color would make

no difference in a person’s life.

190. Drosophila, the small fruit fly, has been warmly received by the scientific

community, mainly owing to the giant-sized chromosomes possessed by the cells

of its salivary glands. These chromosomes, which can stretch to more than a mile

long when unraveled, allow scientists to study DNA using only a sheet of white

paper and a bright table lamp.

191. During the 1966 telecast of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Ronald McDonald,

the fast-food chain’s new mascot, made his first-ever national television

appearance. A hot air balloon of Ronald appeared in the 1987 parade.

192. During the Christmas buying season, Visa cards alone are used an average of

5,340 times every minute in the United States.

193. During the football season of 1905, at least 19 players died in college and high

school contests.

194. During the mid-‘60s, Neil Young and Rick James (of “Superfreak” fame) played in

the same band, the Mynah Birds.

Source: AllMusic.com

195. During the middle Ages, almost all beef, pork, mutton, and chicken were chopped

fine. Forks were unknown at the time and the knife was a kitchen utensil rather

that a piece of tableware.

196. During the Renaissance when Charles VIII’s armies entered France, he also

brought with him his passion for perfume. Charles even had his own personal

perfumer. Rose, orange blossom and rosemary oil were favorite scents in his

court.

197. During World War I, the preferred lubricant for aircraft engines was castor oil.

Unfortunately, the engines also sprayed considerable quantities of the oil, a

common remedy for constipation, back into the cockpit, where the pilots would

ingest it and develop, uh “intestinal distress.”

Source: BajajUSA.com

198. During World War I, young Walt Disney made money with another young man

painting helmets with camouflage colors, banging them up to look battle-scarred,

and then selling them to Americans in search of realistic souvenirs.

199. Duroc is one American breed of hardy hogs having drooping ears – it was

allegedly named after the horse owned by the hog’s breeder.

200. Each year, 9 million tons of salt, more than 10 percent of all the salt produced in

the world, is applied to American highways for road de-icing. The cost of buying

and applying the salt adds up to $200 million.

201. Each year, people in the U.S. spend about four times as much on pet food as they

do on baby food.

202. Economic studies estimate that Project Apollo returned five to seven dollars to

the United States’ economy for every dollar invested in it.

Source: NASA

203. Edward VII had a highly respected reputation as a leader of fashion. As a result, it

was assumed he invented the world-famous Windsor knot after he abdicated in

1936 and became Duke of Windsor. According to Sarah Giddings, fashion trend

researcher, the tie knot may well have been the brainchild of his father; George V.

George was photographed in the 1920s wearing a tie knotted in what appeared to

be the never-before-seen Windsor knot.

204. Elizabeth Ann Seton was the first native-born American to be sainted. She was

born on August 28, 1774 in New York. She was sainted in the Holy Year of 1975.

205. Elvis Presley had two nicknames for his daughter, Lisa Marie Presley: “Yisa” and

“Buttonhead.”

206. Emerson Moser, who was Crayola’s senior crayon maker, revealed upon his

retirement that he was blue-green colorblind and couldn’t see all the colors. He

molded more than 1.4 billion crayons in his 37-year career.

207. Emily Dickinson wrote more than nine hundred poems, of which only four were

published during her lifetime.

208. Emmett Kelly’s classic tramp clown character “Weary Willie” provided comic

relief in the Circus through the end of 1956. When Kelly left his circus career, he

became the mascot for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

209. English anthropologist Francis Galton, a first cousin of Charles Darwin, first

worked out the use of fingerprints for identification purposes.

210. English critic and social theorist John Ruskin (1819-1900) made this astute

observation: “Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most

useless; peacocks and lilies, for instance.”

211. Europe and the Soviet Union grow 75 percent of the world crop of potatoes. In a

good year, the Russians, who call potatoes their “second bread,” account for one-

third of the world’s crop.

212. Evergreens, because of their long life span and their needles’ year-round exposure

to pollution, are the most vulnerable trees to air pollution.

213. Every day more money is printed by Parker Bros, Inc for their boardgame,

“Monopoly,” than by the US Treasury.

Source: UselessTrivia.com

214. Every plant in Tomorrowland at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, is edible.

Plants in this section of the amusement park include bananas, strawberries,

tomatoes, and more. Guests are more than welcome to pick their fill.

215. Finland has the greatest number of islands in the world -- 179,584

216. Flamingo tongues were a common delicacy at Roman feasts.

Source: CoolQuiz.com

217. Food & Wine magazine reported that in Japan, squid is the most popular topping

for Domino’s pizza.

218. For its Olympic athletes who bring home gold, silver, or bronze medal, the

Philippines pays handsome sums of money. However, none have won in decades.

219. For the 2000 Super Bowl, about a third of the TV commercial spots were

purchased by dot-com companies. The following year, the numbers dropped to

just 10 percent bought by ‘Net companies.

220. For the Disney film Aladdin (1992), Robin Williams agreed to work for “scale,”

the Screen Actors Guild minimum of $485 per day, plus a painting by Pablo

Picasso.

221. For the first time, the play-by-play of Super Bowl XXX in 1996 was broadcast in

the Navajo language and NBC-TV offered a secondary, foreign-language audio

feed to its affiliates.

222. “Formication” is a hallucination that bugs or snakes are crawling on or under the

skin, and is common to amphetamine and cocaine users. This hallucination is also

referred to as “crank bugs.”

223. Forty percent of all people at a party snoop in their host’s medicine cabinet.

Source: UselessKnowledge.com

224. Forty-seven czars are buried within the Kremlin walls.

225. Four of the first six presidents of the U.S. were 57 years old when they were

inaugurated. No other presidents have been inaugurated at that age.

226. Fred and Wilma Flintstone were the first couple to be shown in bed together on

prime time television.

Source: UselessKnowledge.com

227. “Frosted Flakes” spokesfeline Tony the Tiger has a son, Tony Jr. and a daughter,

Antoinette.

Source: Kelloggs.com

228. George Washington’s presidential salary was $25,000/annum.

Source: IPL/POTUS

229. Giant crab spiders have such a ferocious appearance they earned a spot as extras

in the horror film Arachnophobia. The creatures, however, eat cockroaches,

crickets, and caterpillars, more than compensating for their scary appearance.

230. GM donated 300 cars for use in the production of the movie, The Matrix

Reloaded. All 300 were wrecked by the end.

231. Green Bay, Wisconsin proudly proclaims itself “The Toilet Paper Capital of The

World.”

Source: UselessTrivia.com

232. Groundhog Day comes from the Christian holiday, Candlemas, only the animal in

whose shadow was monitored was a hedgehog.

Source: Encarta.com

233. “Grunt” and “slump” are two names that refer to a fruit dessert with a biscuit

topping.

234. H.R. Haldeman and Ron Ziegler, who helped plan the Watergate burglary for

President Nixon, both worked at Disneyland when they were younger.

235. Hail destroys hundreds of millions dollars’ worth of crops and property each year,

a greater toll than that taken by tornadoes.

236. Half of all Americans live within 50 miles of their birthplace.

Source: Yahoo Message Board

237. “Hang on Sloopy” is the official rock song of the state of Ohio.

238. Hans Christian Andersen’s 1835 Wonder Stories was banned from children’s

reading lists in Illinois in 1954. The book was stamped “For Adult Readers” to

make it “impossible for children to obtain smut.”

239. “Happy Birthday” was the first song to be performed in outer space, sung by the

Apollo IX astronauts on March 8, 1969.

240. Harrison Ford is listed as one of 50 people barred from entering Tibet --

apparently, Disney Studios clashed with Chinese officials over the film Kundun

(1997). Ford’s wife, at the time, Melissa Mathison wrote the screenplay.

241. Heinrich W. Brandes made the first weather map in 1815, based on data gathered

in 1783. Brandes waited so long because it was the only way he could be certain

the information was correct.

242. Heinz, the company that proudly boasts of “57 Varieties,” actually sells more than

5,700 varieties of items in more than 200 nations. That number reflects the size

of the company’s product line in 1896.

Source: Heinz.com

243. Helen Keller (1880-1968), blind and deaf from an early age, developed her sense

of smell so finely that she could identify friends by their personal odors.

244. Helen of Troy was queen of Sparta.

245. Henri Nestle - The Name’s Familiar

246. Henry Cavendish, one of the great scientists of the 1700s, was painfully shy and

could barely speak to one person – never to two. He was so timid in the presence

of women that he communicated with his female servants by notes only. If one

crossed his path in his house, she was fired on the spot. He built a separate

entrance to the house so that he could come and go without meeting anyone. In

the end, he insisted on dying alone.

247. Henry Ford is credited with inventing the charcoal briquet.

248. Henry Ford was obsessed with soybeans. He once wore a suit and tie made from

soy-based material, served a 16-course meal made entirely from soybeans, and

ordered many Ford auto parts to be made from soy-derived plastic.

249. Hershey’s Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like

it’s kissing the conveyor belt.

Source: UselessKnowledge.com

250. Historians claim that the first valentine was a poem sent in 1415 by Charles, Duke

of Orleans, to his wife. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London at the time. In

the United States, Miss Esther Howland is given credit for sending the first

Valentine’s Day cards. Commercial valentines were introduced in the 1800s and

now the date is much commercialized. The town of Loveland, Colorado, does a

large post office business around February 14.

251. Hockey great, Wayne Gretzky, receives two tickets to every event at Madison

Square Garden as part of his final player contract with the New York Rangers.

252. Hollywood actress Joan Crawford had her back teeth removed to make her

cheekbones more prominent.

253. “Honolulu” means “sheltered harbor.”

254. Hostess Cupcakes and Twinkies are Interstate Brands Corp.’s two most popular

snack items. Every year, the Americans gobble half a billion of each.

255. Hugh Hefner put together the first issue of Playboy Magazine while moonlighting

from his job with “Children’s Activities” magazine.

Source: The People’s Almanac #3.

256. Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.

Source: Bizzarro

257. Humans are unable to taste or smell something that is not soluble. On a dry

tongue, sugar has no taste. In a dry nose, the smell of flowers is not noticeable.

258. Ichigensan okotowari is a custom developed in ryotei (restaurants which serve

authentic traditional Japanese cuisine) in Kyoto. It means that you must be

introduced by someone to be welcomed. The reason for this is it enables the

restaurant to give its warmest hospitality and services to all its customers.

Business cards are preferred to credit cards. Most establishments will only accept

cash.

259. Identical twins are not really identical. They have different finger prints, they are

actually mirrored copies!

260. If a man with normal color vision marries a color-blind woman, their sons will be

color-blind and the daughters will have normal vision. Colorblindness is a sex-

linked trait transmitted by females, but is also recessive in females.

261. If a person “passes wind” consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is

produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb.

Source: Bizzarro

262. If an object has no molecules, the concept of temperature is meaningless. That’s

why it’s technically incorrect to speak of the “cold of outer space” - space has no

temperature, and is known as a “temperature sink,” meaning it drains heat out of

things.

263. If you are classified as a POSSLQ by the Census Bureau, you are a “Person of

Opposite Sex, Sharing Living Quarters.”

264. If you are traveling at 55 mph, your car will go 56 feet before you can shift your

foot from the accelerator to the bake.

265. If you lace your shoes from the inside to the outside the fit will be snugger around

your big toe.

266. If you stacked one million $1 dollar bills, the pile of money would weigh 2,040.8

pounds. If you used $100 dollar bills, the stack would weigh only 20.4 pounds.

267. If you were to rub garlic on the heel of your foot, it would be absorbed by the

pores and eventually show up on your breath.

268. If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough

sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

Source: Bizzarro

269. In 1765, the sandwich was invented by John Montagu, the fourth Earl of

Sandwich, who gave the food its name. The Earl used to order roast beef between

pieces of toast for a snack while he was at the gaming tables, it allowed him to

keep one hand free to play while he ate.

270. In 1871, Albert Jones of New York City received a patent on “an improvement in

paper for packing,” or, corrugated paper.

271. In 1889, Aunt Jemima pancake flour, invented at St. Joseph, Missouri, was the

first self-rising flour for pancakes and the first ready-mix food ever to be

introduced commercially.

272. In 1893, Milwaukee’s Pabst beer won a blue ribbon at the Chicago Fair, and was

sold thereafter as Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.

273. In 1896, only first- and second-place finishers of the Olympics were awarded

medals. The winners received silver medals and crowns of olive branches, while

second-place finishers received bronze medals.

274. In 1912 in Stockholm, the first electric timing devices and public address system

was used at the Olympics.

275. In 1918, Walt Disney was 16 and too young for the military. When he heard that

the Red Cross Ambulance Corps would accept 17-year-olds, he lied about his age,

joined, and began training. He nearly missed his chance when he came down with

influenza during the epidemic that killed 20 million people worldwide. The war

ended. But the Ambulance Corps still needed 50 more men, and Walt was the

fiftieth selected. For the next year, Walt drove an ambulance, chauffeured

officers, played poker, started smoking, and wrote letters.

276. In 1918, Welch’s developed its first jam product called “Grapelade.” The initial

quantity of Grapelade was purchased in its entirety by the U.S. Army. It was an

immediate hit in the military lower ranks, and became a demanded product by

doughboys when they returned to civilian life.

277. In 1928, William Dreyer and Joseph Edy opened a small ice cream factory at 3315

Grand Avenue in Oakland, California. “Grand” has been part of the Dreyer’s

Grand Ice Cream company name ever since: as a memento of the company’s

birthplace on Grand Avenue and a declaration of the magnificence of their ice

cream.

278. In 1937 in the Battle of the Fly it was zipper versus button. French fashion

designers went wild for the new invention for men’s trousers.

279. In 1938, a comic strip was used to advertise Pepsi-cola. It was titled “Pepsi and

Pete.”

280. In 1938, Walt Disney received a special honor for his film, Snow White and the

Seven Dwarves. Disney was given an Oscar and seven miniature statuettes to

commend his film.

281. In 1940, Walt Disney’s Fantasia was the first film in history to use stereophonic

sound. Ever the perfectionist, Disney personally paid for equipping the New York

and Los Angeles Cathay theaters with stereo speakers for his pet film’s world

premiere. Unfortunately, the film bombed at the box office.

282. In 1948, it was common to see carhops serving those who wanted to order food

from their car. Harry Snyder of Baldwin Park, California had the idea of a drive-

thru hamburger stand where customers could order through a two-way speaker

box. Harry opened California’s first drive-thru hamburger stand, named “In-N-

Out Burger”. Today In-N-Out remains privately owned and has 148 stores in 3

states.

283. In 1954, Trix breakfast cereal was introduced by General Mills. The new cereal, a

huge hit with kids, was 46.6 percent sugar.

284. In 1963, Kellogg’s launched a new cereal, Froot Loops, and introduced cereal

character Toucan Sam. The colorful toucan talked in Pig Latin (called

“Toucanese”) and wore a towering hat of fruit. While Sam still graces boxes of

Froot Loops, he’s gone through many changes since his debut, including dropping

the Pig Latin and hat.

285. In 1965, a collection of eight bottles of Chateau Lafite Rothschild was sold at

auction of $2,200.

286. In 1976, the first eight Jelly Belly® flavors were launched: Orange, Green Apple,

Root Beer, Very Cherry, Lemon, Cream Soda, Grape, and Licorice.

287. In 1984, Britons ate 41 pounds of beef per person per year, according to the Meat

& Livestock Commission. By 1994, the figure dropped to 35 pounds. In March

1996, “Mad Cow Disease” in Britain lowered the consumption figure even more,

although many Britons continued to eat roast beef despite the food scare.

288. In 1986, Rob Angel, a 24-year-old waiter from Seattle, Washington, developed

Pictionary, a game in which partners try to guess phrases based on each other’s

drawings.

289. In 1990, the children’s classic “My Friend Flicka” was pulled from the optional

reading lists for 5th- and 6th- graders in Clay County, Florida, because the book

reportedly used objectionable language.

290. In 1994, the Tokens charged back into the spotlight with their song “The Lion

Sleeps Tonight,” more than 30 years after it initially became a hit. Based on a

Zulu folk song, the bouncy tune was Number 1 on the pop charts for three weeks

in October 1961. It turned up again in 1972, recorded by Robert John. It was

featured in Disney’s box office hit The Lion King, and although the song wasn’t on

Lion King’s soundtrack record, RCA re-released the single in response to renewed

interest by the public.

291. In 1996, Chicken Alfredo was introduced as one of the new flavors of Gerber Baby

Food.

292. In 2000, the National Chicken Council reported that the average American

consumes 81 pounds of chicken a year.

293. In 4000 B.C., Egyptians discovered yeast’s leavening abilities and turned out

more than 40 types of bread.

294. In 648 B.C., horses were first introduced into sports with the entrance of riders in

the Olympic Games. By the sixth century B.C., horse-racing had become a popular

sport.

295. In a 1999 National School Lunch Program survey, nearly 70 percent of American

grade-school students surveyed said they liked pizza was their favorite entrée,

corn their favorite vegetable, and cookies their favorite dessert.

296. In a single production shift, 30 miles of string is used on the Barnum’s packages,

which run into 8,000 miles of string per year. As many as 25,000 cartons and

500,000 animals are produced per hour in the Nabisco bakeries.

297. In all of history, the most destructive disease is malaria. More than 1.5 million

people die from malaria every year.

298. In all of history, the most destructive disease is malaria. More than 1.5 million

people die from malaria every year.

299. In an amazing coincidence, the Sun and Moon appear to be the same size in the

Earth’s sky.

Source: Encarta.com

300. In ancient Rome, gold salves were used for the treatment of skin ulcers. Today,

gold leaf plays an important role in the treatment of chronic ulcers.

301. In ancient times, people observed that mistletoe appeared on a branch or twig

where birds had left droppings. “Mistel” is the Anglo-Saxon word for “dung,” and

“tan” is the word for “twig”. So, mistletoe actually means “dung-on-a-twig”. What

a strange meaning for a plant that is supposed to bring love and happiness!

302. In Australia’s metropolitan Melbourne, about 26 percent of the land is reserved

for parks.

303. In Australian slang, to be “spliced” means to be married.

304. In Bavaria, beer is not an alcoholic drink. It is legally defined as a staple food.

Source: FunTrivia.com

305. In British English, a booger is called a “bogey” or “bogie.”

306. In Calama, a town in the Atacama Desert of Chile, it has never rained.

307. In Canada, CHEZ FM fooled the listeners one April Fools Day making listeners

believe that it was the last day that the treasury would honor all the two-dollar

bills still in circulation. The same year they had people going through their

change looking for the mysterious two-dollar coins that had mistakenly been

minted from real gold.

308. In Cape Town, South Africa is the largest rugby museum in the world, which

houses a valuable collection of rugby nostalgia and equipment dating back to

1891.

309. In dentistry, a “mulberry molar” is a tooth with more than the usual four cusps.

310. In early America, simple wooden beds and straw mattresses were the rule in all

but the wealthiest of homes. American inns during the Revolutionary War era

were not lush or comfortable, and an innkeeper would think nothing of requesting

that a guest share his bed with a stranger when accommodations became scarce.

311. In England, vraic is a seaweed used for fuel and fertilizer. It is found in the

Channel Islands.

312. In English folklore, Queen Mab was a fairy queen who governed people’s dreams.

313. In Fairbanks, AK, it is considered an offense to feed alcoholic beverages to a

moose.

Source: DumbLaws.com

314. In fourteenth-century England, the number of males named Robert, William,

Henry, John, or Richard averaged 2 out of every 3.

315. In France, April Fools day is called “Poisson d’Avril” meaning April Fish. The

tradition is that French children will tape paper fish to the backs of their friends.

When they would discover the fish on their back, the prankster would yell

“Poisson d’Avril!” The origin of this is unknown.

316. In Hollywood’s early movie-making days, even the stars supplied their own

wardrobe for contemporary films. Period clothes were supplied from stock, or by

the Western Costume Company, established in 1912. This remained the practice

for most male actors and for all extras. Anyone with a dress suit could earn extra

money and higher status in films of the 1920s.

317. In living memory, it was not until February 18, 1979 that snow fell on the Sahara.

A half-hour storm in southern Algeria stopped traffic. But within a few hours, all

the snow had melted.

318. In Los Angeles, discarded garments are being recycled as industrial rags and

carpet underlay. Such recycling keeps clothing out of landfills, where it makes up

4 percent of the trash dumped each year.

319. In many countries, it is the custom to wish friends a “Happy Birthday” on January

1st, rather than a “Happy New Year.” This day is nicknamed “Everyman’s

Birthday,” and is considered the day when everyone becomes a year older,

whether it’s their actual day of birth or not. Similarly, this practice is observed in

horse racing. No matter when a race horse is born, they all “become” a year older

on New Year’s Day, although there are no records explaining how or why this

came to be.

320. In March 2000, the Disney Company reversed its 43-year ban on mustaches for

its theme-park employees. A memo sent to the 12,000 Disneyland and Walt

Disney World employees said guests would be comfortable with “neatly trimmed

mustaches.” Founding father Walt Disney sported his own mustache, but that

didn’t stop him in 1957 from banning facial hair. He did this to distance his crew

from stereotypical county-fair “carnies.” The grooming code at the theme parks

still bans beards, goatees, piercings, and unnatural hair colors.

321. In Maryland, it is illegal to sell condoms from vending machines with one

exception: places where alcoholic beverages are sold for consumption on the

premises.

Source: Bizzarro

322. In medieval Europe, alchemists mixed powdered gold into drinks to “comfort sore

limbs,” one of the earliest references to arthritis.

323. In North America more bananas are eaten every day than any other fruit.

324. In parts of Greece and Italy, people say “no” by tossing their heads back and

clucking their tongues.

325. In Puerto Rico, wiggling one’s nose means roughly “What’s going on?”

326. In Russia, imported American hot dogs are big favorites. They are eaten at lunch,

dinner, and even breakfast. Wienies are often sliced lengthwise, fried in butter

and dished up with bread, cheese, and smoked fish. In 1996, Russian imports of

American cured-meat products totaled nearly $76 million.

327. In Scandinavia, mistletoe was considered a plant of peace, under which enemies

could declare a truce or warring spouses kiss and make-up. Whenever enemies

met under the mistletoe in the forest, they had to lay down their arms and

observe a truce until the next day.

328. In Scotland the April fool is called April “gowk” which is Scottish for cuckoo. The

Cuckoo is an emblem of simpletons.

329. In Siberia, it can get so cold that the moisture in a person’s breath freezes instead

of forming vapor. It can actually be heard when it falls to earth as ice crystals.

330. In Sweden, it is a breech of etiquette for you to toast your host or anyone who is

your senior in rank or age until after they toast you.

331. In Thailand and India, couples overwhelmingly responded in a survey that if they

could choose the gender of their unborn child, they would prefer a boy.

332. In the 100 years since its inception, there have been 19 years where there has

been NO recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. During World War I and II, there was

one recipient: The International Red Cross Committee, which won in 1917 and

1944.

Source: Nobel.se

333. In the 1930s a sales campaign ran for children’s clothing that used the new

zippers. The device was praised for promoting self-reliance in young children.

“Mommy look! One zip and I’m all dressed!”

334. In the 1960s, women burned their bras as a way of protesting the Vietnam War.

335. In the 1980s, the media revealed that North Pole explorers Robert Perry and

Matthew Henson had fathered children by Eskimo women during their years in

the Arctic in the early 1900s.

336. In the 1990s, in response to a quiz conducted at the National Science Foundation,

only 48 percent of Americans answered the following true/false question

correctly: “The earliest human beings lived at the same time as the dinosaurs.”

The correct answer, as you know doubt knew, is “false.” This quiz was used to

determine how many American adults know about basic science.

337. In the Middle Ages, one Valentine’s Day custom was for young men and women to

draw names from a bowl to see who their valentines would be. They would then

wear these names on their sleeves for one week. - To wear your heart on your

sleeve - now means that it is easy for other people to know how you are feeling.

338. In the opening procession of the Olympics, the team representing the host nation

always marches last.

339. In the scrolling final credits of Disney’s Fantasia, the sorcerer’s name is listed as

“Yensid” – Disney spelt backwards.

340. In the southern part of Japan, it rarely snows to any great amount except for the

mountains, but the northern part usually has plenty of snow in the winter.

Autumn is by far the best time to visit Japan, as far as the weather goes.

341. In the U.S., federal law states that children’s TV shows may contain only 10

minutes of advertising per hour and on weekends the limit is 10 and one-half

minutes.

Source: CoolQuiz.com

342. In the United States over 1 billion valentine cards are sent each year. Valentine’s

Day is celebrated in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom,

France and Australia. Parents get 1 out of every 5 valentines. Women buy 85% of

all valentines.

343. In the United States, 64 percent of men do not make plans in advance for a

romantic Valentine’s Day with their sweethearts.

344. In Tokyo, a bicycle is faster than a car for most trips of less than 50 minutes.

345. In trucking circles, a “bumper sticker” is a tailgater who is following another

vehicle too closely.

346. Incan soldiers invented the process of freeze-drying food. The process was

primitive but effective -- potatoes would be left outside to freeze overnight, then

thawed and stomped on to remove excess water.

347. Increasing herbicide use has created a jungle of at least 48 “super-weeds” that are

resistant to chemicals.

348. Insectivores are animals that eat insects. They include shrews, moles and

hedgehogs.

349. Invertebrates are animals that don’t have a backbone. Most animals are

invertebrates, 98 of every 100 animal species falls into this category.

350. Iranian women competed in the Olympics for the first time at the 1996 Atlanta

Games. The women were limited in the events in which they were allowed to

participate, so they would not violate their country’s restrictive laws regarding

women’s clothing.

351. Israel is one-quarter the size of the state of Maine.

352. It can take a deep-sea clam up to 100 years to reach 0.3 inches (8 millimeters) in

length. The clam is among the slowest growing, yet longest living species on the

planet.

353. It costs more to buy a new car today in the United States than it cost Christopher

Columbus to finance three voyages to and from the New World.

354. It is a common misconception that Mel Gibson is actually Australian. He was

born in New York. His family moved to Australia, where he eventually began his

film career, when he was 12. The belief persists, especially in the Great Britain,

that he’s Australian. For the film that made Gibson an international star, Mad

Max, his voice was dubbed by another actor for the original American release.

355. It is estimated that a single toad may catch and eat as many as 10,000 insects in

the course of a summer.

356. It is estimated that manatees live a maximum of 50 to 60 years.

357. It is the female lion who does more than 90 percent of the hunting, while the

male is afraid to risk his life, or simply prefers to rest.

358. It takes approximately 69,000 venom extractions from the coral snake to fill a 1-

pint container.

359. It was believed in earlier times that if a young woman saw a robin flying overhead

on Valentine’s Day, it meant she would marry a sailor. If she saw a sparrow, she

would marry a poor man and be very happy. If she saw a goldfinch, she would

marry a millionaire.

360. Ivory Soap gets its name from a passage in the 45th Psalm that reads, “All thy

garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of ivory palaces, whereby they

have made thee glad.”

Source: UselessTrivia.com

361. Izzy, the Olympic Games mascot in 1996, was almost universally regarded by

marketing experts as a dud. The blue Olympic mascot, with its bulging eyes and

dangling feet, was a poor seller for many licensed goods makers.

362. Jack Broughton was one of the most revered boxing figures in England. He was

buried at Westminster Abbey, the burial place of British nobility, although

Broughton was not a member of English royalty.

363. Jack Mercer was the longest-serving vocal actor in a cartoon, providing the

“voisk” of Popeye the Sailor for 45 years.

Source: Guinness World Records 2000

364. Jackrabbits are powerful jumpers. A twenty inch adult can leap twenty feet in a

single bound.

365. Jaguar images and costumes were outlawed by the Catholic Church in the

seventeenth century because of their association with Indian religion, militia, and

politics.

366. James Brendan Connolly of the United States won the first medal of the 1896

Olympic Games in the triple jump.

367. Japanese bowing carries different meanings at different angles. A bow at an angle

of five degrees means “Good day” (simple greeting). A bow at an angle of fifteen

degrees is also a common salutation, a bit more formal it means “Good morning.”

A bow at an angle of thirty degrees is a respectful bow to indicate appreciation for

a kind gesture. A bow at a forty-five-degree angle is used to convey deep respect

or an apology.

368. Japanese rules for the proper use of chopsticks are many. Improper use includes

wandering the chopsticks over several foods without decision, and is called

mayoibashi. The unforgivable act of licking the ends of chopsticks is called

neburibashi. Lack of chopstick etiquette is strictly taboo.

369. Jelly Belly created their blueberry flavor jellybean for US president Ronald

Reagan.

Source: FunTrivia.com

370. JENNIFER LOPEZ’s wax figure at New York’s MADAME TUSSAUD’S has a

special interactive feature which sets it apart from the rest - it blushes whenever

patrons whisper in its ear.

371. Joe Namath is the only QB to throw for 4,000 yards in a 14-game season.

Source: AllExperts.com

372. John Adams was the first president to live in the White House - then called the

Executive Mansion.

373. John Carpenter’s 1978 movie “Halloween” was shot in 21 days in the spring of

that year. Made on a budget of $300,000, it eventually would gross nearly $50

million. Because there was no budget for wardrobe, the film’s star, Jamie Lee

Curtis, went to J.C. Penney for her character’s outfits. She spent less than a

hundred dollars for the entire set.

374. John Wilkes Booth first planned only to kidnap Abraham Lincoln, holding the

president hostage until all Confederate prisoners of war were released.

Source: Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Civil War

375. JP Morgan, the American billionaire, bought the White Star Line in 1902, for his

International Mercantile Marine Corp of New Jersey. The company took ten years

to build the Titanic. Therefore, even though she had a British crew, Titanic was

technically an American ship. Morgan was supposed to be on the ship for its first

and only voyage, but had to cancel at the last minute. He even had his own suite

built on the boat, a suite that went unused.

376. Juan Metzger, a former Dannon Co. executive, is credited with putting fruit in

yogurt. Metzger was recognized for suggesting the addition of fruit at the bottom

of containers of the dairy product to improve its taste. The first flavor was

strawberry. Metzger’s father, Joe, co-founded Dannon Co. in the Bronx in 1942.

377. Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and Dostoyevsky were all epileptics.

378. Just 50 years after Johannes Gutenberg invented his printing press in the mid-

15th century; more than 6 million books had been published on law, science,

poetry, politics, and religion.

379. Just preceding his death, King Henry VIII was suffering from painful and

festering, reeking leg ulcers that had to be dressed several times a day. Historians

speculate that he was syphilitic. From the condition of chronic dropsy, now called

edema, Henry’s legs were enormous and he weighed more than 400 pounds.

380. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the fathers of communism, wrote 500 articles for

the “New York Tribune” from 1851 to 1862.

381. Karl Marx was targeted for assassination when he met with two Prussian officers

in his house in Cologne in 1848. Marx had friends among the German labor

unions, and he was considered a threat to the autocrats. Dressed in his bathrobe,

he forced the officers out at the point of a revolver, which, it turned out, was not

loaded.

382. King James VI and the Privy Council issued an edict in 1603 banning the use of

the surname MacGregor.

383. Korea marched under a single flag at the 27th Olympiad at Sydney, Australia, the

first time in Olympic history, to a jubilant standing ovation. Despite such a

display of unity, the two countries were technically still at war; in fact, North

Korea had boycotted the Games when Seoul, South Korea, hosted the summer

games in 1988.

384. Laptop computers and briefcases falling from the overhead bins onto passengers’

heads may be the most common accident aboard an airplane.

385. Leonardo da Vinci invented the scissors.

Source: TriviaWorld.com

386. Liquid water was found inside a 4.5-billion-year-old meteorite in 1999, giving

scientists their first look at extraterrestrial water.

387. M & M’s candy stands for the initials of the inventors (Mars & Murrie).

Source: TriviaWorld.com

388. Male and female sea turtles are about the same size.

389. Marie Curie is the only two-time recipient of the Nobel Prize, once in physics

(1903), and again in chemistry (1911).

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica

390. Mega-rich singer JENNIFER LOPEZ has struck lucky with a bet on the American

Super Bowl. BEN AFFLECK’s fiancee placed an impressive $247,000 bet on the

TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS to win the big championship match - and they did.

391. Men can read smaller print than women but women can hear & smell better.

Source: UselessKnowledge.com

392. MGM’s splashy valentine to its own film musicals, That’s Entertainment

premiered at the Beverly Theater in Beverly Hills in May 1974. Stars attending the

gala opening included Elizabeth Taylor, Fred Astaire, Ava Gardner, Gene Kelly,

Bing Crosby, Jimmy Durante, Groucho Marx, Liza and Vincente Minnelli, and

Johnny Weissmuller. A lavish 4,000-foot-long, 6-foot-wide red carpet ran down

from the theater across the street and down Wilshire Blvd. to the Beverly Wilshire

Hotel, reminiscent of Hollywood’s golden years.

393. Michael Jackson starred in Captain Eo, a short, 3-D space adventure-musical that

began showing at Disneyland and Disney World in 1986 and ran for about ten

years.

394. Mohandas Gandhi’s middle name was Karamchand.

Source: Encarta.com

395. Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a Friday the 13th.

Source: A calendar

396. Montpelier, VT is the least populated state capital in the U.S.

Source: Quizland.com

397. More children are conceived in December than in any other month.

Source: Readers Digest

398. More than 1,130,000 packages of Jell-O gelatin are purchased or eaten every day.

399. More than 50 billion aspirin tablets are consumed worldwide each year.

Source: Bayer Corp.

400. More than 60 percent of all recipients of organ donations are between the ages of

18 and 49.

401. More than 63 million Star Trek books, in more than 15 languages, are in print; 13

were sold every minute in the United States in 1995.

402. Most healthy adults can go without eating anything for a month or longer. But

they must drink at least two quarts of water a day.

403. Most llamas instinctively make good guard animals for livestock.

404. Mother’s Day Symbolism: The pink carnation is a gesture to honor a living

mother, while a white carnation is worn to symbolize remembrance.

405. Mystery writer Agatha Christie’s full name was Agatha May Clarissa Miller

Christie Mallowan. She was born on September 14, 1890, in Devon England.

406. Napoleon Bonaparte loved white horses so much, he owned at least fifty.

407. Napoleon Bonaparte was always depicted with his hand inside his jacket because

he suffered from “chronic nervous itching” and often scratched his stomach sores

until they bled.

408. Napoleon favored mathematicians and physical scientists, but excluded

humanists from his circle, believing them to be troublemakers.

409. Napoleon had conquered Italy by the time he was 26 years old.

410. Napoleon suffered from ailurophobia, the fear of cats.

411. Napoleon took 14,000 French decrees and simplified them into a unified set of

seven laws. This was the first time in modern history that a nation’s laws applied

equally to all citizens. Napoleon’s seven laws are so impressive that by 1960, more

than 70 governments had patterned their own laws after them or used them

verbatim.

412. New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s annual salary is $0.

Source: NY Daily News

413. New York law states that it is illegal to shoot a rabbit from a moving trolley car.

414. New Yorkers spend the most time each day commuting to work, an average of 38

minutes each way.

Source: MSNBC

415. Ninety percent of all species that have become extinct have been birds.

Source: UselessTrivia.com

416. No one can say just when Walt Disney began thinking about undertaking his

biggest project to date, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but by the summer of

1934, his ideas were beginning to take concrete form. An exploratory outline that

he distributed to his animation staff, dated August 9, 1934, included the following

discussion of the dwarfs’ names: “The names which follow each suggest a type of

character and the names will immediately identify the character in the minds of

the audience.” Some of the names that were considered, then discarded, included

Scrappy, Doleful, Crabby, Wistful, Dumpy, Soulful, Tearful, Snappy, Helpful,

Gaspy, Gloomy, Busy, Dirty, Awful, Dizzy, Shifty, and Biggy-Wiggy.

417. No serpents are found in present-day Ireland.

Source: Encarta.com

418. “No Strings Attached,” the pop album released by the band “N Sync in March

2000, sold a whopping 2.41 million copies its first week, breaking a record many

in the industry believed would stand for years. Less than a year earlier in May

1999, the former record had been set by the Backstreet Boys” “Millennium,” when

1.13 million copies were sold in the initial week of release.

419. North America got its first taste of the tropical fruit in 1876 at the Philadelphia

Centennial Exhibition. Each banana was wrapped in foil and sold for 10 cents.

420. Norwegians spend the most per capita on books -- the equivalent of $130/annum.

Source: DidYouKnow.com

421. Nutella is a hazelnut spread made with skim milk and cocoa. It is virtually

unknown in America, but European children have happily smeared it on breakfast

croissants for decades.

422. Nyctitropism is the tendency of the leaves or petals of certain plants to assume a

different position at night.

423. October is “National Cookie Month.”

Source: NY Daily News

424. Of about 350 million cans of chicken noodle soup of all commercial brands sold

annually in the United States, 60 percent is purchased during the cold and flu

season. January is the top-selling month of the year.

425. Of all cheese customs, one of the more unusual was that of the “groaning cheese.”

Years ago in Europe, a prospective father would nibble on a huge chunk of cheese

while awaiting the home birth of his child. Instead of pacing outside the bedroom

door, the father would eat from the center of the cheese until a large hole had

been gnawed out. Later, his newborn infant was ceremoniously passed through

the hole.

426. Of all the major brewing nations, England remains the only one in which ale is

the primary beer consumed. This is in contrast to lager, which is the world’s

overall dominant beer style.

427. Of all the potatoes grown in the United States, only 8 percent are used to make

potato chips. Special varieties referred to as “chipping potatoes” are grown for

this purpose.

428. Official FDA guidelines allow whole pepper to be sold with up to 1 percent of the

volume made up of rodent droppings.

429. Often a child’s first solid food, one of every 11 boxes of cereal sold in the United

States is Cheerios.

430. Okonomiyaki is considered to be Japan’s answer to pizza. It consists of a

potpourri of grilled vegetables, noodles, and meat or seafood, placed between two

pancake-like layers of fried batter.

431. Olive oil is made only from green olives. Nearly the entire production of green

olives grown in Italy is converted into olive oil.

432. On 1 April 1957 on BBC’s show Panorama opened with a line about Spring coming

early this year, prompting the spaghetti harvest in Switzerland to be early as well.

In the normal news manner, spaghetti’s oddly uniform length was explained as

the result of years of dedicated cultivation. The report stated that the ravenous

spaghetti weevil had been conquered.

433. On December 15, 1854, Philadelphia began using the first street-cleaning

machine.

434. On food, writer Barbara Costikyan notes, “In the childhood memories of every

good cook, there’s a large kitchen, a warm stove, a simmering pot, and a mom.”

435. On September 15, 1830, British MP William Huskisson attended the grand

opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Visitors boarded the

Northumbrian, which had stopped to take on water. Against instructions, the

passengers disembarked to hobnob. Seeing the Duke of Wellington, Huskisson

walked across the adjacent line to speak to him just as another train came

barreling down the line. Huskisson stumbled and fell beneath the wheels of the

oncoming train. He became the world’s first railroad passenger fatality.

436. On the average, each American consumes 117 pounds of potatoes, 116 pounds of

beef, 100 pounds of fresh vegetable, 80 pounds of fresh fruit, and 286 eggs per

year.

437. On the average, there are eight peas in a pod.

438. On the Italian Riviera in Viareggio, there is a culinary tradition that a good soup

must always contain one stone from the sea. This stems from the days when an

Italian fisherman’s catch was scooped up in nets; fish and stones frequently

ended up together in the same cooking pot.

439. On the TV show “The Jetsons,” Elroy Jetson attended “the Little Dipper School.”

Source: PowerUp.com.au

440. On the TV show “The Simpsons,” Marge Simpson’s bowling ball is named

“Homer.”

Source: QuizSite.com

441. Once an orange is squeezed or cut, the vitamin C dissipates quickly. After only 8

hours at room temperature or a scant 24 hours in the refrigerator, there is a 20

percent vitamin C loss.

442. One belief of ancient times was that on St. Valentine’s Day and Eve, a young girl

would eventually marry the first eligible male she met on this day. If a girl was

curious and brave enough, she could conjure up the appearance of her future

spouse by going to a graveyard on St. Valentine’s Eve at midnight. She would then

have to sing a prescribed chant and run around the church twelve times.

443. One bushel of corn will sweeten more than 400 cans of soda. A single bushel of

corn can produce: 32 pounds of cornstarch, 1.6 pounds of corn oil, 11.4 pounds of

21 percent protein gluten feed, or 3 pounds of 60 percent gluten meal.

444. One charming St. Valentine’s Day tradition from long ago was to pick a dandelion

that had gone to seed. The person would then take a deep breath and blow the

seeds into the wind. He or she would count the seeds that remained on the stem.

That was supposedly the number of children they would have.

445. One has to eat 11 pounds of potatoes to put on 1 pound of weight - a potato has no

more calories than an apple.

446. One hundred cups of coffee over four hours contain enough caffeine to kill an

average human.

Source: Encarta.com

447. One in eight workers in Boston walks to the office - the highest rate in the nation.

Source: MSNBC

448. One in five American teenagers believes that the US declared its independence

from… France!

Source: NY Daily News

449. One newscaster on the news show CBO Morning announced that the clock in

Ottawa’s Peace Tower was being switched to digital.

450. One of the fattiest fishes is salmon: 4 ounces of the delectable fish contain 9

grams of fat.

451. One single perfect red rose framed with baby’s breath is referred to by some

florists as a “signature rose,” and is the preferred choice for many for giving on

Valentine’s Day, anniversary, or birthday.

452. “One thousand” is the lowest number containing the letter “a” in its spelling.

Source: Yahoo.com

453. Only 38% of all energy used by Americans is generated from domestic oil.

Source: Business Week

454. Oppossums do NOT sleep upside-down hanging by their tails.

Source: Ever Wonder Why?

455. Originally a palace, the Louvre was made into a museum after the French

Revolution.

456. Panama hats actually originated in Ecuador.

Source: Shushan’s Hats

457. Pashka is a Russian Easter cake decorated with molded reliefs depicting the

Passion. It traditionally has candied fruits that form the initials X and B (for

Khristos voskress, meaning “Christ is Risen”) in the Cyrillic alphabet.

458. Pedigree beagles were originally bred to have a white tip on their tails, the better

to be seen (and be distinguished from game) by hunters in the wild.

Source: FunTrivia.com

459. Pennsylvania has the largest rural population in the United States.

460. People began to weave fabric during the Neolithic Era; domesticated cotton first

came into widespread use in ancient India around 3000 BC.

Source: Encarta.com

461. Per 1999 medical data, an alarming 2 million people are hospitalized and as many

as 140,000 die each year from side effects or reactions to prescription drugs.

462. Phobos, one of the moons of Mars, is so close to its parent planet that it could not

be seen by an observer standing at either of Mars poles. Phobos makes three

complete orbits around Mars every day.

463. Pine, spruce, or other evergreen wood should never be used for barbequing. These

woods, when burning or smoking, can add harmful tar and resins to the food.

Only hardwoods should be used for smoking and grilling, such as oak, pecan,

hickory, maple, cherry, alder, apple, or mesquite, depending on the type of meat

being cooked.

464. Pitcher plants are passive hunters that capture insects by means of nectar and

color. Once lured inside, the insect slips on the plant’s slippery inner surface and

drowns in the rain water that has collected in its base. The pitcher plant secretes

enzymes that digest the bodies, except for outer skeletons and wings, of its prey.

465. Pittsburgh is the only city where all major sports teams have the same colors:

black and gold.

466. “Please Mr. Postman” has been a Number 1 hit on Billboard’s record charts twice:

the chart-topping versions were recorded by The Marvelettes in 1961 and The

Carpenters in 1974.

467. Pleonexia is a clinical term for morbid greediness.

468. “Poached egg” means “egg-in-a-bag,” from the French word poche. When an egg

is poached, the white of the egg forms a pocket around the yolk; hence, the name.

469. Point Pinos is the oldest continuously operating lighthouse on the west coast of

the United States. Its beacon has flashed nightly as a guide and warning off the

rocky coast of California since 1855.

470. Poland was the dominant power in Eastern Europe from the fourteenth to the

seventeenth century.

471. Political satire was part of the “Punch and Judy” puppet shows of the seventeenth

century in England. Additionally, a satirical British magazine called Punch was

launched in 1841. It was named for the mischievous title character of the puppet

show. For the most part, puppetry was not an entertainment vehicle for children

until recent years; puppetry has been a political metaphor for centuries.

472. Pooch Passion: According to a pet owner survey, 79 percent of Americans give

their dogs holiday and/or birthday presents.

473. Pope Alexander III declared Henry II to be the rightful sovereign of Ireland in

1172. It took seven and a half centuries for the Irish to regain their freedom.

474. Porcupines float in water!

Source: FunnyFuel.com

475. Potatoes were banned in Burgundy in 1910 because it was said, “frequent use

caused leprosy.”

476. Potentially toxic mercury necklaces, popular among south Texas youths, were

collected in 1996 under a state program following the death of a 5-year-old girl

who was exposed to mercury vapors when her necklace broke as she played in a

sandbox. Attached to a cord, the mercury-filled glass vials sold for about $2.

Mercury can affect the brain, nervous system vision, hearing and memory, and

long exposure is deadly.

477. President Benjamin Harrison and the first lady never touched the light switches

themselves when electric lights were installed during the renovation of the White

House in 1891. Fearing shock, they would call for a servant whenever they wanted

the lights on or off.

478. President James Buchanan was a gracious host. When the Prince of Wales visited

the White House in the fall of 1860, so many guests accompanied him, there

weren’t enough beds. The story goes that the president decided to sleep in the

hallway.

479. President James Garfield could write Latin with one hand and Greek with the

other – simultaneously.

Source: UselessKnowledge.com

480. President Nixon was the first U.S. President to attend a regular season National

Football League game while in office.

Source: The Nixon and Sports Website

481. President William Howard Taft was a seventh cousin twice removed of Richard M.

Nixon, and was a distant relative of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

482. President William McKinley always wore a red carnation in his lapel for good

luck.

483. President William McKinley had a pet parrot that he named “Washington Post.”

484. President Woodrow Wilson’s given name was Thomas. He was known to all as

“Tommy” until he was 24-years-old.

Source: The People’s Almanac 3

485. “Q” is the only letter in the alphabet that does not appear in the name of any state

of the United States.

486. Queen Elizabeth II has a silver hood ornament of St. George (the patron saint of

England) slaying the dragon placed on any car in which she is traveling.

487. Ray Kroc, the man who made McDonalds a world-wide fast food colossus started

out by selling paper cups and then milk shake mixers, before discovering the

hamburger restaurants that would make him famous.

Source: Time.com

488. Redhaven, fairhaven, elberta, desert gold, and sunhaven are varieties of peaches.

489. Rhode Island, the smallest state, also has the smallest state motto: Hope.

Source: Mini Page

490. Richard Cadbury invented the first Valentine’s Day candy box in the late 1800s.

491. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil was, for a time (1808), declared the capital of Portugal by

King Joao VI, who fled his country while it was occupied by Napoleon I’s forces.

Source: Is Greenland Really Green?

492. Robert E. Lee’s dying words were “Strike the Tent.”

493. Rock Elm generates the greatest heat among common firewoods.

Source: Yahoo.com/Woodheat.org

494. Ronald Reagan was originally cast in the immortal role of “Rick” in the movie

“Casablanca.”

Source: People’s Almanac #3

495. Rosemary Clooney’s signature song, “Come On-A-My-House,” was written by

Ross Bagdassarian, who, under the nom de chante Dave Seville, also gave life

(and voices) to Alvin and the Chipmunks. Bagdassarian shared the writing credit

with his cousin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer William Saroyan.

Source: Hey, I just know this stuff

496. ROV stands for remotely operated vehicle, and it dives in deep water to videotape

or collect deep sea animals or other scientific data. An ROV doesn’t carry people.

It is operated from a research ship at the ocean’s surface.

497. Rubies and sapphires are made of corundum -- the hardest known rock after the

diamond.

498. Rulership by words is called logocracy.

499. Samuel F. B. Morse set about perfecting the telegraph as a money making scheme

to augment his meager income earned from portraiture.

Source: About.com

500. Saturday mail delivery in Canada was eliminated by Canada Post on February 1,

1969.

501. Scarlett O’ Hara, Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind” lead character, was

originally given the name Pansy.

502. Science has been able to design a robot that allows people to tickle themselves. To

use the machine you would have to lie on your back with your eyes closed. The

robot, located near you, would have a piece of soft foam attached to a plastic rod

which you would control by joystick. You would maneuver the remote control and

after a short delay, would respond. This takes advantage of the delay in the

cerebellum.

503. Scientists believe that hydrogen comprises approximately 90 to 99 percent of all

matter in the universe.

504. Scientists have determined that most rocks on the surface of the Moon are

between 3 and 4.6 billion years old.

505. Scientists have found chocolate has a chemical that helps counteract depression.

506. Scooby-Doo’s “real” name is Scoobert. The name itself was inspired by Frank

Sinatra’s scat refrain, (“doobie-doobie-doooo”) from his rendition of “Strangers

in the Night.”

Source: ABC Sports Online/Britannica.com

507. Second only to Christmas, Valentine’s Day brings out the card-giver in people,

with an average of 1.01 billion cards purchased every year.

508. Secure, relatively high-yielding stocks came to be called blue chips, a term taken

from the game of poker, where blue chips are more valuable than white or red

chips.

509. Selenologists study the Moon, as geologists study Earth.

510. Senectitude is another word for old age.

511. Set in 175 acres of woodland in Yorkshire Dales, Britain’s Lightwater Valley

Theme Park has the longest roller coaster in the world, The Ultimate, as affirmed

by the Guinness Book of World Records 2000.

512. Shelta is an esoteric jargon based on Irish and Gaelic, and it is still spoken by

tinkers and vagrants in some parts of Ireland and England.

513. “Sherbet” is Australian slang for beer.

514. Should there be a crash; Prince Charles and Prince William never travel on the

same airplane as a precaution.

515. Since 1874 the mints of the United States have been making currency for foreign

governments, whose combined orders have at times exceeded the volume of

domestic requirements.

516. Since Neptune’s discovery in 1846, it has made about three-quarters of one

revolution of the Sun.

517. Sliced bread, the greatest thing SINCE MailBits Trivia, was invented in 1928 by

Otto Friedrich Rodwedder.

Source: Business 2.0

518. Slime molds are half fungus and half bacteria. They live on the floor of South

American rainforests and slither around like an animal in search of food while,

like a plant, they scatter spores that will become more slime molds.

519. Sneezing with your eyes open will NOT cause them to pop out.

Source: Encarta.com

520. So many women copied Veronica Lake’s trademark “peekaboo” hairstyle during

World War II that the U.S. government had to ask the movie star to pull her long

blonde tresses back from over her right eye, in order to cut down on accidents in

factories.

Source: Slate.com

521. Soap was considered a frivolous luxury of the British aristocracy from the early

1700s until 1862, and there was a tax on those who used it in England.

522. Some lions mate over 50 times a day.

Source: Bizzarro

523. Some microbes cause diseases, but most are harmless and many are actually

helpful. For example, some microbes help clean up oil spills.

524. Some Persian rugs may last as long as 500 years before wearing out.

525. Some scientists predict that the new Euro currency, minted from an alloy high in

nickel, a powerful allergen that causes skin complaints in a third of all young

women, will give millions of people eczema and dermatitis.

Source: Times of London

526. Some toothpaste and makeup contain crushed volcanic stone.

527. Some world maps as recently as the mid 18th century listed California as an

island.

Source: Britannica.com

528. South Australia’s city of Adelaide is unusual in that it was settled by free people.

The city has no convict history.

529. Specializing in showing only newsreels, the Embassy Theatre opened in New York

City in November 1929. It proved to be popular for a time, and was the first

theater of its kind.

530. St Valentine’s Day on February 14th dates back to a Roman festival of youth,

Lupercalia, when young people chose their sweethearts by lottery.

531. St. Swithin’s Day, July 15: During the 900s, a man named Swithin (spelling also

recorded as “Swithun”) was the Bishop of Winchester in England. Some years

after his death, and for reasons not documented, Bishop Swithin’s remains were

transferred to Winchester Cathedral on July 15, 971. That same day, there was a

tremendous rainstorm. Legend has it that Bishop Swithin was so angry about the

move from his final resting place that he caused the storm. According to old

English folklore, if it should now rain on July 15th, St. Swithin will make it rain

for 40 days thereafter.

532. Strangeray Springs cattle station in South Australia is the largest ranch in the

world. Its area measures 30,029 square kilometers – only slightly smaller than

the European country of Belgium.

533. Stuart (or Stewart) is the most famous “occupational” name in Scotland, and was

the name of a line of kings and queens which lasted almost 350 years.

534. Sunflower seeds in a bird feeder will attract the greatest variety of wild birds.

535. Sydney is the largest city in Australia. It contains 4 million people.

536. Tapping the top of an agitated beverage can with a key, spoon, or other metal

object actually DOES reduce your chance of being sprayed.

Source: Quizland.com

537. Teddy Roosevelt found his favorite dog, Skip, wandering around the Grand

Canyon. While Roosevelt had many dogs, Skip was the only one permitted to

sleep in the presidential bed.

538. Teenagers often have episodes of anger and negativity in which they slam doors

and scream tirades. According to experts, most puberty-driven “snit fits” last an

average of 15 minutes.

539. Television broadcasts were suspended until the end of World War II in 1945. This

delayed the development of an affordable television system until the late 1940s.

540. Television’s “I Love Lucy” began as a radio show “My Favorite Husband,” in

which Lucy played the scheming, middle-class wife of a bank vice president. CBS

wanted to move the show to television - but almost scrapped the idea because of

Lucy’s insistence that Desi Arnaz play her husband. Lucy got her way, and the rest

is television history.

541. Ten books on a shelf can be arranged in 3,628,800 different ways.

542. Ten percent of frequent fliers say they never check their luggage when flying.

543. Termites eat wood twice as fast when listening to heavy metal music.

Source: FunTrivia.com

544. Texas Rangers shortstop Alex Rodriguez, at $22 million, makes more money than

any other baseball player -- and the entire Tampa Bay Devil Rays, too.

545. Texas state commissioner of agriculture Jim Hightower, in a speech to the Dallas

Chamber of Commerce in March 1986, and which was printed in the New York

Times, declared the following: “The only difference between a pigeon and the

American farmer today is that a pigeon can still make a deposit on a John Deere.”

546. That “I am” is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

Source: UselessKnowledge.com

547. That it costs a total of $6,400 to raise a medium-size dog to the age of eleven.

Source: UselessKnowledge.com

548. That Regis Philbin, a spry 69 years young, became the oldest man to appear as a

pinup in “16” magazine.

Source: NY Daily News

549. That 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.

Source: Triviaonline

550. That, due to continental drifts. The Atlantic Ocean is now 120 ft wider than it was

at the time of Columbus’s first voyage.

Source: The People’s Almanac 3

551. The 1961 movie, “The Misfits” with Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable, was the last

movie for both screen legends.

Source: About.com

552. The 1988 blockbuster movie Titanic lasts 3 hours and 14 minutes. The actual ship

took 2 hours and 40 minutes to sink after hitting an iceberg.

553. The 1991 “Truth or Dare” documentary about Madonna’s 1990 international

concert tour was shown in Australia and New Zealand under the title of “In Bed

with Madonna.

554. The ability to firmly grip with your hand comes from the muscles in the forearm.

The muscles pull on tendons in the hand, bending the fingers.

555. The actor/director Robert Redford was the first male to appear alone on the cover

of “Ladies Home Journal.”

Source: NY Daily News

556. The actress Amy Irving provided the singing voice of Jessica Rabbit in the film,

“Who Framed Roger Rabbit.”

Source: UselessTrivia.com

557. The actress Morgan Fairchild’s birth name Patsy McClenny.

Source: Quizland.com

558. The African boabab tree can have a circumference as large as 100 feet. One such

tree in Zimbabwe is so wide that the hollowed-out trunk serves as a shelter at a

bus stop, with a capacity to hold as many as 40 people.

559. The age at which muscles are most powerful is between 20 and 25.

560. The American crow weighs approximately one pound when fully grown.

561. The animal responsible for the most human deaths worldwide is the mosquito.

562. 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.

Source: Bizzarro

563. The ant has the largest brain in the animal kingdom, in proportion to its size.

564. There are more different kinds of insects on existence today than the total of all

kinds of other animals put together.

565. The Asian grasshopper can jump up to 15 feet, a distance the length of 18 of their

10-inch bodies.

566. The Asiatic cordial kumiss is made from fermented cow’s milk.

567. The athletes from Iceland took 25 hours in the air to arrive in Sydney, Australia,

for the 27th Olympic Games in September 2000.

568. The Australian slang term “zot” means to knock out or kill quickly, as in “Zot that

fly.”

569. The average airspeed of the common housefly is 4.5 miles per hour. A housefly

beats its wings about 20,000 times per minute.

570. The average bee can travel up to 11 miles per hour.

571. The average child will eat 1,500 PB sandwiches by high school graduation.

572. The average house fly lives only two weeks.

573. The average human needs 18,250 gallons of water to keep going in an 80- year

lifetime. That’s enough to fill 2-1/2 tanker trucks!

Source: Food Rules

574. The average life expectancy of a queen bee is 6 years, a worker bee, 6 months, and

a drone, just 8 weeks.

575. The average person sees more than 20,000 TV commercials in a year.

Source: About.com

576. The average person’s nose makes nearly a cupful of mucus (aka “snot”) every day.

Most remains in the nose, which it moistens and protects.

Source: UselessKnowledge.com

577. The average spider can travel up to 1.17 miles per hour.

578. The Aztec ruler Montezuma II consumed upwards to fifty cups of chocolate daily

in the belief that the substance possessed aphrodisiacal qualities.

Source: The Junk Food Companion

579. “The bends” is a painful condition caused when nitrogen gas forms bubbles in a

diver’s blood. Scuba divers get the bends if they come up too fast from a deep

dive.

580. The Bible, the world’s best selling book, is also the world’s most shoplifted book.

Source: DidYouKnow.com

581. The biggest butterfly in the world is the Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing. It lives in

Papua New Guinea, and has a wingspan greater than 11 inches (28 centimeters).

582. The biggest dragonflies are South American giant damselflies. Their wingspan is

up to 7 inches (19 centimeters) and their bodies are 5 inches (12 centimeters)

long.

583. The birth name of Freddy Mercury, the late lead singer of Queen, was Farookh

Bulsara.

Source: An xs4all.nl member’s page

584. The bite of a brown recluse spider can result in a wound so severe that it may

require two months to heal.

585. The “Black Death” of the 14th century killed one in three persons in Europe.

Source: The Ultimate Trivia Quiz

586. The blood of a honeybee never clots.

587. The boat name most often registered by owners is “Obsession.”

Source: Yahoo.com

588. The boxer Jersey Joe Walcott’s real name is Arnold Raymond Cream.

Source: MindFun.com

589. The brain is surrounded by a membrane laced with nerves that transmit

sensations to the organ. However, the brain itself has no feeling; if it is cut into,

the person feels no pain.

Source: UselessKnowledge.com

590. The cakewalk, a dance popular among fashionable classes at the turn of the 20th

century was originally a slaves’ parody of awkward white ballroom dances.

Source: History.com

591. The camel’s hump(s) are used as fat storage. Thus, an undernourished camel will

not have a hump.

Source: DidYouKnow.com

592. The candy bar “Snickers” was named after a horse.

Source: The Junk Food Companion

593. The cap-and-gown uniform associated with school graduations dates to the 12th

and 13th centuries.

Source: UselessKnowledge.com

594. The celebration of Valentine’s Day started in the time of the Roman Empire.

595. The chickens in the United States lay enough eggs to circle the globe a hundred

times.

596. The Chocolate Manufacturers Association of America says that 36 million boxes

of chocolate are sold for Valentine’s Day. According to Hershey’s Chocolate

Company, Valentine’s Day ranks fourth in sales behind Halloween, Christmas,

and Easter.

597. The Christmas carol, “Good King Wenceslas,” got its title not due to any great

deed of its namesake monarch, but because the song’s English writer liked how

the name “Wenceslas” sounded.

Source: Patron Saints

598. The Cleveland Browns are the only football team never to have a symbol, mascot,

or name on their football helmets.

599. The Coffee Cantata was written by Johann Sebastian Bach.

600. The country of Sweden has the most phones per capita.

601. The country/western singer Garth Brooks attended Oklahoma State University on

a track scholarship. His event was the javelin throw.

Source: Trivia2001

602. The days between October 4 and October 15, 1582 did not “exist,” they were

skipped, due to a decree from Pope Gregory XIII, who changed the official

calendar from the Julian model to the Gregorian.

Source: FunTrivia.com

603. The Dead Sea is not a sea, but a landlocked salt lake, 45 miles long by 9 miles

wide.

604. The declawing of a pet cat involves surgery called an onychectomy, in which the

entire claw and end bone of each toe of the animal are amputated. Cat owners

considering it should know that it’s a controversial operation, with potential

adverse physical and psychological effects on the cat.

605. The descriptive phrase “eighty pence to the pound” is a British term meaning “not

all there” or “stupid.”

606. The dog and the turkey were the only two domesticated animals in ancient

Mexico.

607. The doughnut was invented in 1847 by Hanson Gregory, a New England- based

mariner.

Source: Ever Wonder Why?

608. The early European umbrellas were made of wood or whalebone and covered with

alpaca or oiled canvas.

609. The Eiffel tower “grows” six inches every year, due to metal expansion in warm

weather.

Source: FunTrivia.com

610. The electric chair was invented by a dentist.

611. The entire life of a house fly is spent within a few hundred feet of the area where

it was born.

612. The expressions, “Death be not proud,” “for whom the bell tolls” and “no man is

an island” all come from the poems of John Donne.

Source: Web Fun.com

613. The eyes and nose of a frog are on top of its head, enabling it to breathe and see

when most of its body is under the water.

614. The fact that blood circulates was discovered by the British physician William

Harvey.

Source: Encarta.com

615. The famed London Bridge spanned the River Thames for almost 140 years. In

1968, the city of London decided to sell its sinking bridge for $2.6 million to

Robert P. McCulloch, founder of Lake Havasu City, Arizona, who needed a bridge

to connect the city to an island in the lake. The island was created in order to

remove an obstruction that blocked water flow from the Colorado River into

Thompson Bay. It took three years to carefully dismantle, pack, ship, and

reconstruct the landmark bridge in the desert state. It cost more than $7 million

to rebuild it in Lake Havasu City. Finally, on October 10, 1971, London Bridge was

officially dedicated in Arizona before a crowd of 100,000 in a lavish ceremony.

616. The famed London Bridge which spanned the River Thames for almost 140 years

from the 1830s until 1968 now connects Arizona’s Lake Havasu City’s mainland

and island. The bridge survived a terrorist attack in 1884 and the bombing from

the Germans in both World Wars. But it could not withstand the forces of nature,

as it was sinking into the Thames River’s clay bottom.

617. The famous Citgo sign near Fenway Park in Boston is maintained not by Citgo,

but by Boston’s historical society.

618. The famous Eden-Roc Hotel, in Cap D’Antibes in the French Riviera, is often

described as the most fabulous hotel in the world. The President of the Republic,

Arab princes, stars of the stage and screen – all have stayed here in this security-

conscious Shangri-La where credit cards are not recognized, and hard cash is the

only currency. Sara and Gerald Murphy, a rich American couple with very

fashionable friends invented the summer season in the 1920s. They convinced the

Eden Roc’s owner to keep the place open after April, and filled it with guests like

F. Scott Fitzgerald and wife Zelda, Ernest Hemingway, Cole Porter, and Pablo

Picasso.

619. The famous silhouette of the Coca-Cola bottle was inspired by the coca bean.

Source: Quizland.com

620. The father of the pink flamingo (the plastic lawn ornament) was Don

Featherstone of Massachusetts. Featherstone graduated from art school and went

to work as a designer for Union Products, a Leominster, Massachusetts company

that manufactured flat plastic lawn ornaments. He designed the pink flamingo in

1957 as a follow-up project to his plastic duck. Today, Featherstone is president

and part owner of the company that sells an average of 250,000 to 500,000

plastic pink flamingos a year.

621. The fear of beautiful women is called “caligynephobia.”

Source: phobialist.com

622. The fear of lawsuits is called Liticaphobia.

Source: phobialist.com

623. The fear of the color white is called leukophobia.

Source: phobialist.com

624. The female name Vanessa is Greek for “butterfly.”

625. The film for the first Kodak camera was 2-3/4 inches wide, or 70 millimeters.

Kodak has been manufacturing 70-millimeter film continuously since 1888.

626. The final word given at the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee in 2000 was

“demarche,” a noun meaning a course of action or a diplomatic representation or

protest; in 1999, the final word was “logorrhea,” a noun meaning an excessive use

of words.

627. The first African American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives was

Joseph Hayne Rainey of South Carolina (1870).

Source: Britannica.com

628. The first American publisher of valentines was printer and artist Esther Howland.

During the 1870s, her elaborate lace cards were purchased by the wealthy, as they

cost a minimum of 5 dollars - some sold for as much as 35 dollars. Mass

production eventually brought prices down, and the affordable “penny valentine”

became popular with the lower classes.

629. The first American-based team to win the Stanley Cup was the Seattle

Metropolitans, who hoisted the trophy in 1917.

Source: TSN.com

630. The first “braces” were constructed by Pierre Fauchard in 1728. Fauchard’s

“braces” consisted of a flat strip of metal, which was connected to teeth by pieces

of thread.

631. The first career-girl comic strip was Winnie Winkle, debuting in 1920.

632. The first company ever to issue stock was “The mysterie and companie of

Merchants adventurers for the discoverie of regions, dominians, islands, and

places unknown” (later simplified to “The Russia Company”), which was

chartered in 1553.

Source: Encarta.com

633. The first Emmy Award, presented in 1949, went to a puppet. Shirley Dinsdale, a

15 year-old ventriloquist on the Eddie Cantor radio show in the 40s, received the

award for her puppet Judy Splinters.

Source: DidYouKnow.com

634. The first James Bond movies wasn’t “Dr. No” (1962), it was an American

television production of “Casino Royale” (1954).

Source: The Bond Film Informant

635. The first La-Z-Boy (1928) was a reclining lawn chair made of wooden slats.

Source: ONE Magazine

636. The first modern brassiere, made from two silk handkerchiefs and some pink

ribbon, was patented in 1913 by the New York socialite Mary Phelps Jacob.

Source: Quizland.com

637. The first non-human to win an Academy Award was... Mickey Mouse.

Source: Ask.com

638. The first Olympic Games not held in either Europe or America was in Melbourne

(1956).

Source: MindFun.com

639. The first rap artists to top both the singles and album charts were white — Vanilla

Ice with “Ice Ice Baby” and the Beastie Boys with “License to Ill,” respectively.

Source: AllMusic.com

640. The first U.S. patent for an animal was issued to geneticists at Harvard University

in 1988. The animal -- called an oncomouse -- is a genetically engineered mouse

that is highly susceptible to breast cancer.

641. The first umbrella factory in the U.S. was founded in 1928 in Baltimore,

Maryland.

642. The first United States silver coins were minted from metal obtained from Martha

Washington’s silver service.

Source: Encarta.com

643. The first women flight attendants in 1930 were required to weigh no more than

115 pounds, be nurses, and unmarried.

644. The flying monkeys from the film “The Wizard of OZ” had no name, other than

“flying monkeys.” However, their leader was called “Nikko.”

Source: OZ Characters/Eskimo.com

645. The former US Supreme Court Justice, Byron White once led the NFL in rushing.

Source: NFL.com

646. The “French” marigold arrived in Europe with the Spanish conquistadors during

the sixteenth century, who brought the delicate flower with them from its land of

origin. It was from Mexico, not France.

647. The G.I. Joe toy line got its name from the 1945 movie “The Story of G.I. Joe”,

which retold the story of war correspondent Ernie Pyle’s days on the front lines.

It starred Burgess Meredith and Robert Mitchum.

648. The game of a cats’ cradle – two players alternately strength a looped string over

their fingers to produce different designs – has been around since about 1760.

649. The gesture of a nose tap in Britain means secrecy or confidentiality. In Italy, a

tap to the nose signifies a friendly warning.

650. The Grammy Awards were introduced to counter the growing “threat” of rock

music.

Source: DidYouKnow.com

651. The Greenwich Observatory is currently located at Cambridge University’s

Institute of Astronomy in Central England. However, the site of the observatory

was originally in Greenwich, and was arbitrarily established in 1884 as longitude

0 degrees. The observatory was moved because London’s fog made celestial

observations difficult. A plaque in the original structure marks the zero point

from which longitude is calculated. The observatory was founded in 1675 by King

Charles II to keep accurate tables of the position of the moon for the calculation

of longitude by English ships. Photographs of the sun were taken daily at the

observatory, conditions permitting, and a continuous photographic record of

sunspots was kept starting in 1873.

652. The Guiseppe Verdi opera “Aida” was commissioned to honor the opening of the

Suez Canal.

Source: Operaweb.com

653. The heart of a blue whale is the size of a small car.

Source: About.com

654. The hides of mature female blue sharks are more than twice as thick as those of

males, probably as a protection against courtship bites.

655. The highly seasoned stew of meat or fish called ragout (rhymes with “blue”) is

prepared without vegetables. The name is derived from French and means “to

restore the appetite of.”

656. The hippopotamus has the world’s shortest sperm.

657. The hippopotamus is, next to the elephants, the heaviest of all land mammals. It

may weigh as much as 8,000 pounds. It is also a close relative of the pig.

658. The Honours of Scotland are the Crown, the Sceptre, and the Sword of State. They

are emblems of kingly power when Scotland was a separate kingdom

659. The Hope diamond was acquired by King Louis XIV in 1668. It was worn 120

years later by Marie Antoinette and it now resides in the Smithsonian Institution.

This beautiful natural blue diamond weighs 44.5 carats today.

660. The Indian epic poem the “Mahabhrata” is eight times longer than “The Iliad” and

“The Odyssey” combined.

Source: AbsoluteTrivia.com

661. The initials M.G. on the famous British-made automobile stand for “Morris

Garage.”

662. The investing term “Blue Chip” comes from the color of the highest value of poker

chip, blue!

Source: Yahoo.com

663. The islands of Bermuda have no rivers or lakes. The inhabitants must use rain for

water.

664. The Italian city of Verona, where Shakespeare’s lovers Romeo and Juliet lived,

receives about 1,000 letters addressed to Juliet every Valentine’s Day.

665. The Japanese word for chef, itamae, literally means “in front of the cutting

board.”

666. The Kentucky Supreme Court has ruled that the prosecution must throw its files

wide open to the defense if the accused is suffering from amnesia.

667. The kerosene fungus can live in jet fuel tanks. If there is a minute amount of

water in the tank, the fungus can use the fuel as food.

668. The “Kilroy” of “Kilroy Was Here” fame refers to one James J. Kilroy, a shipyard

inspector from Massachusetts who marked his work thusly.

Source: Yahoo.com

669. The king of hearts is the only king without a moustache on a standard playing

card.

670. The kings in a deck of cards each represent a great king from history. The king of

spades is King David, the king of clubs is Alexander the Great, the king of hearts

is Charlemagne, and the king of diamonds is Julius Caesar.

671. The largest lake in Australia is Eyre, measuring 3,420 square miles (8,885 sq.

km).

672. The last dictionary that Noah Webster wrote contained 70,000 words and their

meanings. He wrote it with no help and by hand.

Source: UselessTrivia.com

673. The Leap-The-Dips roller coaster is the oldest roller coaster in the world. It is

located within Lakemont Park in Pennsylvania. It was built in 1902, and replaced

the Gravity Railroad which burned down in 1901. The Leap-The-Dips is the last

known example in the United States of a side friction figure eight roller coaster.

The roller coaster’s configurations are 1,452 feet in length, 41 feet at the highest

point, the largest dip is 9 feet, and the steepest dip descent is 25 degrees. The

average ride time of Leap-The-Dips is 1 minute and the average speed is 10 miles

per hour.

674. The LEGO Company was founded by Ole Kirk Christiansen in Billund, Denmark,

in 1916. Today it has over 9,000 employees worldwide. The Danish words Leg and

Godt were put together to make “LEGO.” Later, it was discovered that in Latin,

the term “Lego” means “I put together” or “I assemble.”

675. The little bits of paper left over when holes are punched in data cards or tape are

called “chad.”

676. The liver is a gland, not an organ.

677. The longest recorded flight of a chicken was thirteen seconds.

Source: TriviaWorld.com

678. The lungs of an average adult, unfolded and flattened out would cover an area the

size of a tennis court.

679. The meaning of the Chinese phrase “gong hay fot choy” is “Wishing you a

Prosperous New Year.”

680. The methane gas produced by 10 cows, if captured, would provide heating for a

small house for a year.

Source: DidYouKnow.com

681. The minimum age for marriage of Italian girls was raised by law to 12 years in

1892.

682. The most popular form of hair removal among women is shaving. According to

the Gillette Company, 70 percent of women who remove hair do so by shaving.

683. The most popular topic of public speakers is motivation at 23 percent, followed by

leadership at 17 percent.

684. The most prolific beer drinkers by nationality are the Czechs.

Source: Yahoo.com

685. The most “wired” nation in the world (on a per-capita basis) is Finland, with

244.5 Internet users per 1000 persons.

Source: Guinness World Records 2000

686. The musicians Peter Frampton, Paul Simon, and James Taylor were once partners

in a professional soccer team, the NASL’s Philadelphia Freedom.

Source: AllMusic.com

687. The muskellunge, a fierce fighting fish that can weigh in at around 70 pounds, is

the official state fish of Wisconsin.

688. The name of Frankenstein’s monster in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is Adam.

Source: Frankenstein

689. The name of the computer operating system “UNIX” stands for UNiplexed

Information and Computing System.

Source: Yahoo.com

690. The name “Wendy” was first used in J. M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan” in 1904. It was

derived from the nickname “fwendy” (“friend”), given to the author by a young

friend.

Source: Behind the Name

691. The names of some cities in the United States are the names of other U.S. states.

These include Nevada in Missouri, California Maryland, Louisiana in Missouri,

Oregon in Wisconsin, Kansas in Oklahoma, Wyoming in Ohio, Michigan in North

Dakota, Delaware in Arkansas, and Indiana in Pennsylvania.

692. The National Sporting Goods Association says one-fourth of all athletic products

are purchased during November and December, the holiday shopping period.

693. The Netherlands is credited with having the most bikes in the world. One bike per

person is the national average with an estimated 16 million bicycles nation wide.

694. The New York Board of Education barred the whipping of children in its schools

on March 4, 1908.

695. The New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was born on the 4th of July.

Source: National Baseball Hall of Fame

696. The northernmost U.S. state capital is Juneau, Alaska.

697. The Notorious B.I.G. is the only artist in rock history to score two posthumous

number one singles -- “Hypnotize” and “Mo Money Mo Problems.”

Source: AllMusic.com

698. The number two is the only number greater than zero that, when added to or

multiplied by itself, gives the same result: 4.

699. The ocean liner Queen Elizabeth II moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel

that it consumes.

Source: UselessTrivia.com

700. The odd zigzag in the North Carolina-South Carolina state line, just south of

Charlotte, resulted when boundary commissioners altered the line in 1772 to

avoid splitting the Catawba Indians between the two British colonies.

701. The official currency of Afghanistan is (drum-roll, please) the Afghani.

Source: The New York Daily News

702. The oldest continuously inhabited city in the world is Damascus, Syria.

Source: Newsweek

703. The oldest continuously published newspaper in the USA is the Hartford Courant,

founded in 1764.

Source: Hartford page, Defunct Hockey Teams site

704. The oldest existing governing body is the Althingi, which has served as the

parliamentary body of Iceland since CE 930.

Source: Althingi Web Site

705. The oldest person ever to be operated on was aged 111 years, 105 days.

Source: Guinness World Records 2000

706. The only living parts of a tree are its thin layer beneath the bark called the

cambium, its leaves, and the tips of its roots and branches.

707. The only US state with a single-syllable name is “Maine.”

Source: Look it up

708. The only “X”-rated film to win a Best Picture Academy Award was “Midnight

Cowboy.”

Source: AMPAS.com

709. The original name of the comic strip “Peanuts” was “Li’l Folk.”

Source: Snoopy.com

710. The Pacific Ocean flows “downhill,” from east to west: The sea level in the

Philippines is normally about two feet higher than the sea level on the coast of

Panama.

Source: CNet.com

711. The penalty for conviction of smuggling in Bangladesh is the death penalty.

712. The Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia, has nearly 68,000 miles of

telephone lines.

713. The Pentagon is twice the size of the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, and has three

times the floor space of the Empire State Building in New York. It is one of the

world’s largest office buildings.

714. The people of Hamamatsu, Japan, take part in a kite-fighting custom dating from

the 1500s. It is believed that a kite was flown to honor the birth of an ancient

prince. Another legend suggests the sport began when a ruler told his people to

fight with kites instead of with one another. The annual custom honors the first-

born sons of each family, and some of the enormous kites bear the names of the

boys. Today, the kite-fighting festival draws nearly two million people to

Hamamatsu.

715. The percentage of Africa that is wilderness is 28%, while the percentage of North

America that is wilderness is 38%.

Source: UselessKnowledge.com

716. The percentage of income tax paid by the average American has more than

doubled since 1953. In 1953 the average family paid 11 percent of its income out

in taxes. In 1976 it paid 23 percent.

717. The pichiciego is a little-known burrowing South American animal that is related

to the armadillo, but is smaller in size. The ending of the animal’s name is derived

from the Spanish ciego, meaning “blind.”

718. The pirate Blackbeard’s real name was Edward Teach.

Source: AbsoluteTrivia.com

719. The plain black dickey worn with a clerical collar by some clergymen is called a

rabat.

720. The planet Venus does not tilt as it goes around the Sun, so consequently, it has

no seasons. On Mars, however, the seasons are more exaggerated and last much

longer than on Earth.

721. The planet Venus is enveloped by an atmosphere of sulfuric acid.

Source: About.com

722. The planet Venus is named after the Roman goddess of love.

723. The playwright “Tennessee” Williams” given name was Thomas.

Source: Britannica.com

724. The poem commonly known as “The Night before Christmas” was originally titled

“A Visit from Saint Nicholas”. This poem was written by Clement Moore for his

children and some guests, one of whom anonymously sent the poem to a New

York newspaper for publication.

725. The point in a lunar orbit that is farthest from the moon is called an “apolune.”

726. The population of the American colonies in 1610 was 350.

727. The practice of breaking a bottle over a ship’s bow was introduced by the British

navy in the late 1600s.

Source: Ask.com

728. The President and Vice President of the United States are NOT limited in the

amount of sick leave they get.

Source: OPM.com

729. The psychedelic guru Timothy Leary’s five favorite movies were: 2001: A Space

Odyssey, Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise, The Meaning of Life and Trading

Places.

Source: TimothyLeary.com

730. The record for ketchup drinking belongs to Dustin Phillips (USA), who drank a

14-oz. bottle of tomato ketchup through a 1/4” straw in 33 seconds on September

23, 1999.

Source: GuinnessWorldRecords.com

731. The Royal Flag of Scotland, the Lion Rampant flag, should now legally only be

used by the monarch in relation to her capacity as Queen in Scotland. However, it

is widely used as a second national flag. However, it is not allowable to fly the flag

without permission, on a flagpole or from a building. The Lord Lyon once

threatened the town councilors of Cumbernauld with an Act passed in 1679 which

demanded the death penalty for misuse of the royal flag.

732. The rude act of raking foods into one’s already full mouth with chopsticks is

disdainfully called komibashi in Japanese.

733. The sale of chewing gum is outlawed in Singapore because it is a means of

“tainting an environment free of dirt.”

734. The SALT agreement was passed while Richard Nixon was in the White House.

735. The San Francisco cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments.

736. The saxophone, invented by the Belgian musical instrument maker Adolf Sax five

years earlier, was officially introduced into the military bands of the French Army

on July 30, 1845.

737. The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” is not an old proverb but was

invented in 1921 by an advertising executive named Fred R. Barnard.

Source: About.com

738. The scientific name for cacao beans (from whence comes chocolate) is Theobroma

cacao, which literally translated means “food of the gods.”

Source: The Junk Food Companion

739. The Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee has been conducted by Scripps

Howard Newspapers and other leading newspapers since 1939. It was instituted

by the Louisville (KY) Courier-Journal in 1925.

740. The sculptor who created Mount Rushmore’s famous presidential monument was

Gutzon Borglum.

Source: Travel South Dakota

741. The seats at Fenway Park in Boston, home of the Boston Red Sox, are made of

oak.

742. The Serpentine Railway, built in 1885 at Coney Island, was the first gravity roller

coaster to tie the track end together and return passengers to their starting point

without them needing to disembark while the car was placed on the return track.

The train, with its passengers seated sideways on a wooden bench, ran atop an

undulating wooden structure. The train was slow and took several minutes to

complete its circuit.

743. The shortest player ever to win an NBA scoring title is Charles Barkley, who

stands 6’ 6”.

Source: NBA.com

744. The skeleton of an average 160 pound body weighs about 29 pounds.

745. The skin is only about as deep as the tip of a ball-point pen. First-degree burns

affect only the very top layers of the skin; second-degree burns, midway through

the skin’s thickness. Third-degree burns penetrate and damage the entire

thickness of the skin.

746. The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History houses the world’s largest

shell collection, some 15 million specimens. A smaller museum in Sanibel, Florida

owns a mere 2 million shells and claims to be the world’s only museum devoted

solely to mollusks.

747. The Soviet Union banned Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1892 “The Adventures of

Sherlock Holmes” because of the book’s references to occultism and spiritualism.

748. The Speaker of the House in Great Britain is not allowed to speak.

749. The “spring up, fall out” phenomenon says children grow twice as fast in the

spring as they do in the fall, while they gain more weight in the fall.

750. The state of Michigan claims more varieties of trees than all of Europe, which are

spread over 19 million forested acres — more than half the state.

751. The State of Nevada first legalized gambling in 1931. At that same time, the

Hoover Dam was being built and the federal government did not want its workers

(who earned 50 cents an hour) to be involved with such diversions, so they built

the town of Boulder City to house the dam workers. To this day, Boulder City is

the only city in Nevada where gambling is illegal. Hoover Dam is 726 feet tall and

660 feet thick at its base. Enough rock was excavated in its construction to build

the Great Wall of China. Contrary to old wives’ tales, no workers were buried in

the dam’s concrete.

752. The state of New York instituted the nation’s first mandatory seat-belt law on

July 12, 1984.

753. The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.

Source: Bizzarro

754. The surface of the tongue is as unique as our fingerprints.

755. The taboo against whistling backstage comes from the pre-electricity era when a

whistle was the signal for the curtains and the scenery to drop. An unexpected

whistle could cause an unexpected scene change.

756. The term “anchorman” was coined with regard to the respected Walter Cronkite

on CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, likening his lead position to that of

an anchor on a relay team. For a time in Sweden, TV news anchors were called

“Cronkiters” in honor of Cronkite.

757. The term “happy-go-lucky” has been in existence since 1665.

758. The three favorite foods of Ren Hoek (the chihuahua from “Ren and Stimpy”) are

chicken pot-pie, chocolate-covered raisins, and glazed ham.

Source: Ren and Stimpy

759. The three-toed sloth of tropical America can swim easily, but it can only drag

itself across bare ground.

760. The total monetary value of the elements in our bodies and the value of the

average person’s hide come to about $4.50.

Source: UselessKnowledge.com

761. The town through which Lady Godiva rode naked was Coventry, England.

Source: CET Trivia pages

762. The tradition of using a baby to signify the New Year was begun in Greece around

600 BC. It was their tradition at that time to celebrate their god of wine,

Dionysus, by parading a baby in a basket, representing the annual rebirth of that

god as the spirit of fertility. Early Egyptians also used a baby as a symbol of

rebirth.

763. The traditional sailors cap was designed to act as a floatation device. When wet,

the cap would trap an air bubble and keep a sailor’s head afloat.

Source: Ever Wonder Why?

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

strips of rubber around car windows.

Source: pogolo.com

765. The U.S. Congress passed a law in 1832 requiring all American citizens to spend

one day each year fasting and praying. For the most part, people ignored the law,

and no effort was made to enforce the legislation.

766. The U.S. Congress passed laws in 1999 to discourage the practice of registering

popular or trademarked Internet domain names for the sole purpose of resale or

profit, although it is legal to do it with generic words or surnames.

767. The U.S. interstate highway system requires that 1 mile in every 5 must be

straight. These sections can be used as airstrips in a time of war or other

emergencies.

768. The United States Supreme Court once ruled Federal income tax unconstitutional.

Income tax was first imposed during the Civil War as a temporary revenue-raising

measure.

769. The Wendy’s fast food chain is named after founder Dave Thomas’s daughter -

Melinda Lou Thomas. Her older siblings had nicknamed her Wendy and it stuck.

Her father Dave got his start working for Kentucky Fried Chicken.

770. The Wodaabe, sheltered from the influences of the outside world, have unusual

customs. When Wodaabe greet each other, they may not look each other directly

in the eyes. During daylight hours, a man cannot hold his wife’s hand in public,

call her by name, or speak to her in a personal way.

771. The word banana is African, though, a word carried to the New World by

Portuguese slave traders. In the time of Alexander the Great time, bananas were

called “pala” in Athens.

772. The word “candy” comes from the Arabic word, “qandi, from “qand,” a lump of

cane sugar.

Source: Britannica.com

773. The word game “Scrabble” was invented by Alfred Butts.

Source: About.com

774. The word “trivia” comes from “trivium,” the name given to the disciplines that

comprise the three lower rungs of the “seven liberal arts”: grammar, rhetoric, and

logic.

Source: Common Knowledge

775. The world’s fastest reptile (measured on land) is the spiny- tailed iguana of Costa

Rica. It has been clocked at 21.7 mph.

776. The world’s biggest pair of panties, made from acrylic and lace, measured 29.4 ft.

(8.97 m.) x 14 ft. (4.26 m.). They were strung across London’s Oxford street as

part of a promotion.

Source: GuinnessWorldRecords.com

777. The world’s largest and finest natural green diamond is the 41-carat Dresden

Green. The Dresden, owned since the 1700s by the Electors of Saxony, is

surrounded by white diamonds in gold and silver settings.

778. There are 119 grooves on the edge of a quarter.

779. There are 142,000 recognized species of moths, and scientists estimate that there

are thousands more yet to be discovered.

780. There are 18 different animal shapes in the Animal Crackers cookie zoo.

781. There are 3 main groups/shapes of pathogenic bacteria: cocci (round), bacilli

(rod-shaped), and spirilla (coil-like).

782. There are 42 dots on a pair of dice.

783. There are 48 teaspoons in a cup: three teaspoons make a tablespoon and 16

tablespoons to a cup.

784. There are 640 acres in a square mile.

785. There are about 295 species of pigeons and doves in the world.

786. There are about 3,000 hot dog vendors in metropolitan New York.

787. There are many theories of how tipping came to be, but the most prevalent story

goes back several hundred years to England. When people traveled by stagecoach,

they often sent a servant ahead to make arrangements for their arrival. The

servant would give the service providers money “to ensure promptness,” which

was shortened by initials to be “tip.” Today a tip is more of a thank you after good

service than a bribe to get good service.

788. There are more collect calls placed on Father’s Day than on any other day of the

year.

Source: UselessKnowledge.com

789. There are more than 100 offenses that carry the death penalty in Iran.

790. There are more than 300 references to sheep and lambs, more than any other

animal, in the Bible’s Old Testament, one of the earliest records of sheep.

791. There are more than 40,000 characters in Chinese script.

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

793. There are more than 700 species of plants that grow in the United States that

have been identified as dangerous if eaten. Among them are some that are

commonly favored by gardeners: buttercups, daffodils, lily of the valley, sweet

peas, oleander, azalea, bleeding heart, delphinium, and rhododendron.

794. There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.

795. There are no wild deer of any kind in Australia, and the small red deer is the only

one found in Africa.

796. There are odor technicians in the perfume trade with the olfactory skill to

distinguish 20,000 odors at 20 levels of intensity.

797. There are only about fifty geyser fields known to exist on Earth and

approximately two-thirds of those fifty are home to five or fewer active geysers.

Yellowstone National Park in the state of Wyoming has more geysers than any

other field known in the world. The park has been the site of extensive study of

the properties and characteristics of geysers.

798. There are some 50 different species of sea snakes, and all of them are venomous.

They thrive in abundance along the coast from the Persian Gulf to Japan and

around Australia and Melanesia. Their venom is ten times as virulent as that of

the cobra. Humans bitten by them have died within two-and-a-half hours.

799. There are two radios for every man, woman, and child in the United States.

800. There have been 21 theatrical James Bond films (19 “official”; 2 “unofficial”),

while Bond creator Ian Fleming only wrote 14 Bond novels.

Source: Behind the Curtain

801. There is a town in British Columbia, Canada called Poopoo Creek.

Source: UselessKnowledge.com

802. There is a town in Idaho called “Beer Bottle Crossing.”

Source: UselessKnowledge.com

803. There is evidence to suggest that ginger root is effective against motion sickness

and nausea when taken in powdered form.

804. There is just one known species of ostrich in the world – it is in the order of

Struthioniformes.

805. There were 15,700,003 Model T Ford’s manufactured, all in black.

806. Thomas Edison held more than 1,300 U.S. and foreign patents.

807. Thomas Edison, “the Wizard of Menlo Park,” established an “invention factory,”

the first industrial research laboratory, with the hope of producing a new

invention every ten days. In one 4-year period, he obtained 300 patents or one

every five days.

808. Thomas Edison’s first major invention was the quadruplex telegraph. Unlike

other telegraphs at the time, it could send four messages at the same time over

one wire.

809. Thomas Jefferson invented the dumbwaiter.

810. Those famous “dogs playing poker” pictures were painted by an artist named

Cassius Marcellus Coolidge (1844-1937), whose nickname was “Cash.”

Source: The von Hoffman Bros.’ Big Damn Book of Sheer Manliness

811. Though Frederick Banting and Charles Best were co-discovers of insulin, only

Banting was officially recognized for the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1923. He

shared his winnings with Best, though.

812. Three U.S. presidents have been the sons of clergymen: Chester Arthur, Grover

Cleveland, and Woodrow Wilson.

813. Three Whigs have served as president of the United States: William Henry

Harrison, Zachary Taylor, and Millard Fillmore.

814. Time magazine reports that in Russia, buying carnations or roses is a prerequisite

for a first date. They must be given in odd numbers, because flowers given in even

numbers are reserved for funerals.

815. To enforce integration, Dwight Eisenhower ordered the U.S. National Guard to

escort students into the Little Rock High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

816. To say “hello” in Sri Lanka, a person must place their palms together under the

chin and bow slightly.

817. To test avocados, mangoes, or papayas for ripeness, gently fondle the fruit - never

squeeze it - and if the flesh yields to the touch, it’s ready to eat.

818. Today, 40 percent of the world’s newspapers are printed on paper made from

Canada’s forests.

819. Today’s custom of using mistletoe to decorate houses at Christmas is a survival of

European beliefs and traditions. In Europe, branches of mistletoe were hung from

ceilings to ward off evil spirits. In some countries, they were placed over house

and stable doors to prevent the entrance of witches.

820. Tom Selleck was originally cast as Indiana Jones, the role made immortal by

Harrison Ford in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Selleck declined because he was

committed to his television series, “Magnum P.I.”

821. Tonto Natural Bridge in Arizona is the largest natural travertine bridge in the

world, spanning Pine Creek 183 feet high. Mineral springs rich with limestone

formed the massive bridge one drop at a time. Hats, shoes, or other items left in

the creek become encrusted with travertine and appear to be made of stone.

822. Too much fluid putting pressure on your eardrums causes earaches. They are

often a result of infection, allergies, or a virus.

823. Topless saleswomen are legal in Liverpool, England -- but only in tropical fish

stores.

Source: Bizzarro

824. Traditionally, a Jewish baby is not named for a living person. There is a concern

that the “Angel of Death” will mistake the infant for the older person if the names

are the same.

825. Traditionally, Encyclopedia Britannica has called upon experts to write entries on

their respective fields of expertise. Among them Harry Houdini on “conjuring,”

and Sigmund Freud on “psychoanalysis.”

Source: Britannica.com

826. Tug-of-war was a Modern Olympic event until 1920.

Source: The People’s Almanac 3

827. Twitchers are birdwatchers in England. In the U.S., they are called birders.

Source: CoolQuiz.com

828. Two towns in Vermont claim to be President Chester A. Arthur’s birthplace, but

recent research supports his opponents’ charges that he was born in Canada, and

therefore, was not eligible to be president under the U.S. Constitution.

829. U.S. Patent #D219,584 was issued in 1970 to veteran movie actor Steve McQueen.

He was famous not only for his movies but also for racing cars and working on

engines off-camera as well. A byproduct of his racing hobby was the invention of

a bucket seat.

830. U.S. President Bill Clinton is allergic to dust, mold, pollen, cats, Christmas trees,

and dairy products.

831. Unknown people made the first glassware about 3,500 years ago in Mesopotamia.

832. Until he’s about 21 years old, the male Indian elephant isn’t interested in

romancing a female elephant.

833. Until recent years, people living in remote areas of Afghanistan and Ethiopia were

immunized against smallpox by having dried powdered scabs from victims of the

disease blown up their noses. This treatment was invented by a Chinese Buddhist

nun in the eleventh century. It is the oldest known form of vaccination.

834. Until the mid 1800s, paper was made from cotton rags.

835. Upon her death in 1967, writer Dorothy Parker left most of her estate to civil

rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. She left her ashes to writer Lillian Hellman,

who reportedly never claimed them.

836. “Utah” is from the Navajo word meaning “upper.”

837. Valentine’s Day means chocolate, and lots of it. According to U.S. candy

manufacturers, Americans spend more than $1,105 million each Valentine’s Day

on candy, making it the fourth biggest holiday of the year for confectionery

purchases. In order, the top three holidays for candy sales are Halloween,

Christmas, and Easter.

838. Vellum, a fine-quality writing parchment, is prepared from animal skin: lambs,

kids, and very young calves. Coarser, tougher types are made from the skins of

male goats, wolves, and older calves. Vellum replaced papyrus and was

superseded by paper.

839. Victorian publications never dared show a bed in any of their advertisements.

When illustrations of the bedroom were required, the bed itself was hidden by

curtains.

840. “Wet” means “simpleton” in Australian slang. The Wet is the rainy season in

Northern Australia.

841. When baby Opossums are born, they are so small that an entire litter can fit in a

tablespoon. They live inside their mother’s pouch for three months before

climbing out and riding on her back.

842. When Ben Franklin was living in England, he used the breast stroke during his

regular swims across the Thames River - the same stroke used by Matthew Webb

in 1875 when he became the first person to swim the English Channel.

843. When Cher was a teenager, she got her start in the recording industry as a backup

singer for the famed producer Phil Spector (“Be My Baby,” et al).

Source: AllMusic.com

844. When Russian men engage in conversation, the distance between the two is

typically about ten inches. This is considered a comfortable proximity; American

men, on the other hand, consider something closer to two feet as preferable.

845. When written in Chinese, the word “crisis” is composed of two characters -- one

representing danger, the other representing opportunity.

Source: Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations

846. While fighting with the French underground during World War II, Jacques Yves

Cousteau invented the aqualung.

Source: UselessKnowledge.com

847. Wine will spoil if exposed to light; hence, tinted bottles.

848. “Wings” (1927) was the first and only silent film to win the Best Picture Academy

Award.

Source: UselessTrivia.com

849. Winking at women, even to express friendship, is considered bad manners in

Australia.

850. With 382,650 babies being born each day and 144,902 people dying daily, the

world population increases about 237,748 people a day.

851. With 980-plus species, bats make up more than 23 percent of all known mammals

by species.

852. With more than 105 million pounds in 1997, Georgia is the world”s top pecan

producer; Texas came in second with 90 million pounds.

853. “Within the Walls Rodeo Day” is when prisoners wear black and white striped

outfits and take part in volunteer rodeos within the walls of the prison.

854. Without using precision instruments, Eratosthenes measured the radius of Earth

in the third century B.C., and came within 1 percent of the value determined by

today’s technology.

855. Women manufacture far less serotonin, the key mood-regulating brain chemical

than men. This could explain why they’re more likely to suffer from certain

psychological problems such as depression.

856. Women’s hair on average is about half the diameter of men’s hair.

Source: TriviaWorld.com

857. You CAN catch “cooties.” The word cooties likely come from the Malay word

“kutu,” which means “body lice.”

Source: Is Greenland Really Green?

858. Your birthday is not a special day after all -- you share it with no fewer than nine

million others.

859. Your ears aren’t just good for helping you hear. They help you keep your balance

as well. Near the top of the cochlea are three loops called the semi-circular canals.

These canals are full of fluid that moves when you move your head. It pushes up

against the cilia and sends messages to your brain that tells it how your body is

moving. You know that feeling of dizziness after you have been spinning around?

Well, the fluid in you ears spun as well. That makes the cilia move in all different

directions and confused your brain.

860. Zachary Taylor, formerly a professional soldier, never voted. He didn’t even vote

in the election that elected him U.S. president.