Text 1964, 303 rader
Skriven 2005-05-04 22:57:45 av Bruno Barbiere (4:801/161.0)
Ärende: Did You Know? (05/10)
=============================
·   Debra Winger was the voice of E.T.

·   Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore
Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt were all cousins through one
connection or another. (FDR and Eleanor were about five times
removed.)

·   The Earth-Moon size ratio is the largest in the our
solar system, excepting Pluto-Charon.

·   Each unit on the Richter Scale is equivalent to a power
factor of about 32. So a 6 is 32 times more powerful than a
5! Though it goes to 10, 9 is estimated to be the point of
total tetonic destruction (2 is the smallest that can be felt
unaided.)

·   Most snakes have either only one lung, or in some cases,
two, with one much reduced in size. This apparently serves to
make room for other organs in the highly-elongated bodies of
snakes.

·   A twelve-foot anaconda can catch, kill, and eat a six-
foot caiman, a close relative of crocodles and alligators.
While these snakes are not usually considered to be the
*longest* snake in the world, they are the heaviest,
exceeding the reticulated python in girth.

·   Cinderella's slippers were originally made out of fur.
The story was changed in the 1600s by a translator.

·   It was the left shoe that Aschenputtel (Cinderella) lost
at the stairway, when the prince tried to follow her.

·   Cinderella is known as Tuhkimo in Finland.

·   If you come from Birmingham, you are a Brummie.

·   The names of all the continents end with the same letter
that they start with, e.g. Asia, Europe.

·   There is a word in the English language with only one
vowel, which occurs six times: Indivisibility.

·   The dome on Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home,
conceals a billiards room. In Jefferson's day, billiards were
illegal in Virginia.

·   According to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, it
is possible to go slower than light and faster than light,
but it is impossible to go at the speed of light.

·   In most advertisments, including newspapers, the time
displayed on a watch is 10:10 because then the arms frame the
brand of the watch.

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

·   Ben and Jerry's send the waste from making ice cream to
local pig farmers to use as feed. Pigs love the stuff, except
for one flavor: Mint Oreo.

·   The "heat" of peppers is rated on the Scoville scale.

·   Until 1965, driving was done on the left-hand side on
roads in Sweden. The conversion to right-hand

·   was done on a weekday at 5pm. All traffic stopped as
people switched sides. This time and day were chosen to
prevent accidents where drivers would have gotten up in the
morning and been too sleepy to realize *this* was the day of
the changeover.

·   In left hand drive countries, such as the UK, Ireland,
Japan, and Australia, drivers sit on the right hand side of
the car. Except for Sweden, where drivers sat on the left, as
in North-America.

·   Japan is the third most densely populated country in the
world. First is the Netherlands, followed by Belgium.

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

·   The "D" in D-day means "Day". The French term for "D-
Day" is "J-jour".

·   Female orcas live twice as long as male orcas. The
larger numbers of female orcas in a pod are because of the
female's longer lifespan, not because the males have
collected a harem.

·   Most spiders belong to the orb weaver spider family,
Family Aranidae. This is pronounced "A Rainy Day."

·   The Mongol emperor Genghis Khan's original name was
Temujin.

·   Genghis Khan started out life as a goatherd.

·   The type specimen for the human species is the skull of
Edward Drinker Cope, an American paleontologist of the late
1800's. A type specimen is used in paleontology as the best
example of that species.

·   The first word spoken by an ape in the movie Planet of
the Apes was "Smile".

·   The two lines that connect your top lip to the bottom of
your nose are known as the philtrum.

·   Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the
correct order.

·   The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan"

·   Hummingbirds are the only animals able to fly backwards

·   All the dirt from the foundation to build the World
Trade Center in NYC was dumped into the Hudson River to form
the community now known as Battery City Park.

·   The Holland and Lincoln Tunnels under the Hudson River
connecting New Jersey and New York are an engineering feat.
The air circulators in the tunnels circulate fresh air
completely every ninety seconds.

·   The dirt road that General Washington and his soldiers
took to fight off General Clinton during the Battle of
Monmouth was called the Burlington Path.

·   The only social fraternity founded during the Civil War
was Theta Xi fraternity, at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute
in Troy, New York in 1864.

·   The Hudson River along the island of Manhattan flows in
either direction depending upon the tide.

·   Several buildings in Manhattan have their own zip code!
The World Trade Center has several.

·   Lucifer is latin for "Light Bringer". It is a
translation of the Hebrew name for Satan, Halael. Satan means

·   "adversary", devil means "liar".

·   A cat's jaws cannot move sideways.

·   Geller and Huchra have made three-dimensional maps of
the distrubution of galaxies. In each layer of the map some
galaxies are grouped together in such a way that they
resemble a human being.

·   Avocado is derived from the Spanish word 'aguacate'
which is derived from 'ahuacatl' meaning testicle.

·   The company providing the liability insurance for the
Republican National Convention in San Diego is the same firm
that insured the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic.

·   Telly Savalas and Louis Armstrong died on their
birthdays.

·   Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.

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

·   The smallest port in Canada is Port Williams, Nova
Scotia.

·   The Canadian province of Newfoundland has its own time
zone, which is half an hour behind Atlantic standard time.

·   Cats in Halifax, Nova Scotia, have a very high
probability of having six toes.

·   The second longest word in the English language is
"antidisestablishmenterianism".

·   Rats like boiled sweets better than they like cheese.
Big Ben was slowed five minutes one day when a passing group
of starlings decided to take a rest on the minute hand of the
clock.

·   The Velvet Underground was named after a book on the S&M
culture.

·   The Velvet Underground's first manager was Andy Warhol,
who also produced their first album and designed the cover
artwork. The cover artwork for the album (called "The Velvet
Underground and Nico") featured a bright yellow banana that
could be peeled off to reveal a bright pink banana
underneath, with the label "Peel Slowly and See." "Peel
Slowly and See" is the title of the Velvet Underground
comprehensive boxed set, which is the only currently-
available Velvet Underground recording to feature a peelable
banana. The peelable banana caused substantial delays in the
production of the VU's first album and contributed to Lou
Reed's firing Andy Warhol as the group's manager.

·   The "wild" horses of western North America are actually
feral, not wild.

·   Native speakers of Japanese learn Spanish much more
easily than they learn English. Native speakers of English
learn Spanish much more easily than they learn Japanese.

·   New Zealand kiwis lay the largest eggs with respect to
their body size of any bird.

·   Elephants have been found swimming miles from shore in
the Indian Ocean.

·   When two words are combined to form a single word (e.g.,
motor + hotel = motel, breakfast + lunch = brunch) the new
word is called a "portmanteau."

·   Sting got his name because of a yellow-and-black striped
shirt he wore until it literally fell apart.

·   Every photograph of an American atomic bomb detonation
was taken by Harold Edgerton.

·   The topknot that quails have is called a hmuh.

·   Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was the physician who set the leg of
Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth ... and whose shame
created the expression for ignominy, "His name is Mudd."

·   The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen
seconds.

·   The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint -- no two
lions have the same pattern of whiskers.

·   There is a type of parrot in New Zealand that likes to
eat the rubber strips that line car windows.

·   New Zealand is also the only country that contains every
type of climate in the world.

·   Cockroaches' favorite food is the glue on envelopes and
on the back of postage stamps

·   In 1969, the last Corvair was painted gold.

·   Ralph Kramden made 62 dollars a week.

·   The only way to stop the pain of the flathead fish's
sting is by rubbing the same fish's slime on the wound it
gave you.

·   Betsy Ross was born with a fully formed set of teeth.

·   Betsy Ross's other contribution to the American
Revolution, beside sewing the first American flag, was
running a munitions factory in her basement.

·   Devo's original name was going to be De-evolution. They
shortened it to Devo.

·   Steely Dan got their name from a sexual device depicted
in the book 'The Naked Lunch'.

·   Bob Dylan's real name is Robert Zimmerman.

·   Andy Warhol created the Rolling Stone's emblem depicting
the big tongue. It first appeared on the cover of the 'Sticky
Fingers' album.

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

·   Chris Ford scored the first ever NBA three-point shot.

·   Of all the East Coast States, New Hampshire has the
shortest coastline, about fourteen miles.

·   New Hampshire is also the only State name the has four
consecutive consonants in it (in the same word).

·   Ontario is the only Canadian Province that borders the
Great Lakes.

·   Alaska has the longest border with Canada of all the
fifty states.

·   Montana has the longest border with Canada of the lower
forty-eight States.

·   Montana also borders the most Canadian Provinces of all
the fifty states. It borders three of them.

·   Arkansas is the only US State that begins with "a" but
does not end with "a". All the other States that begin with
"a", Arizona, Alabama and Alaska, also end with "a".

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

---
 * Origin: HidraSoft BBS * SP,Brasil * telnet hidrasoft.dyndns.org (4:801/161)