Text 1967, 303 rader
Skriven 2005-05-04 22:57:45 av Bruno Barbiere (4:801/161.0)
Ärende: Did You Know? (08/10)
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honor of his brother.

·   Fitchburg, Massachusetts is the second hillest city in
the US.

·   During WWII the city of Leningrad underwent a seventeen
month German seige. Unable to access the city by roads, the
Russians built a railroad across the ice on Lake Lagoda to
get food and supplies to the citizens.

·   The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by
a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.

·   Thomas Edison got patents for a method of making
concrete furniture and a cigar which was supposed to burn
forever

·   Elton John's real name is Reginald Dwight. Elton comes
from Elton Dean, a Bluesology sax player. John comes from
Long John Baldry, founder of Blues Inc. They were the first
electric white blues band ever seen in England--1961

·   Elton John's uncle was a professional soccer player. He
broke his leg playing for Nottingham Forest in the 1959
English FA Cup Final.

·   The saying "it's so cold out there it could freeze the
balls off a brass monkey" came from when they had old cannons
like ones used in the Civil War. The cannonballs were stacked
in a pyramid formation, called a brass monkey. When it got
extremely cold outside they would crack and break off... Thus
the saying.

·   Horses cannot vomit.

·   Rabbits cannot vomit.

·   The word "Boondocks" comes from the Tagalog (Filipino)
word "Bundok," which

·   means mountain.

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

·   The "chapters" of the New Testament were not there
originally. When monks in medieval times translated it

·   from the Greek, they numbered the pages in each "book."

·   Coca-Cola contains neither coca nor cola.

·   Yucatan, as in the peninsula, is from Maya "u" + "u" +
"uthaan," meaning "listen to how they speak," what the Maya
said when they first heard the Spaniards.

·   The term, "It's all fun and games until someone loses an
eye" is from Ancient Rome.

·   The only rule during wrestling matches was, "No eye
gouging." Everything else was allowed, but the only way to be
disqualified is to poke someone's eye out.

·   The original plan for Disneyland included a
Lilliputland.

·   S.O.S. doesn't stand for "Save Our Ship" or "Save Our
Souls" -- It was just chosen by an 1908 international

·   conference on Morse Code because the letters S and O
were easy to remember and just about anyone could key it and
read it, S = dot dot dot, O = dash dash dash..

·   The word "moose" was originally Algonquin.

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

·   The "ZIP" in Zip Code stands for "Zone Improvement
Plan."

·   Pocahontas appeared on the back of the $20 bill in 1875.

·   When a female horse and male donkey mate, the offspring
is called a mule, but when a male horse and female donkey
mate, the offspring is called a hinny.

·   The way to get more mules is to mate a male donkey with
a female horse.

·   A donkey will sink in quicksand but a mule won't.

·   Crickets hear through their knees.

·   Turnips turn green when sunburnt.

·   Pigs, walruses and light-colored horses can be
sunburned.

·   A type of jellyfish found off the coast of England is
the longest animal in the world.

·   When Voyager 2 visited Neptune it saw a small irregular
white cloud that zips around Neptune every sixteen hours or
so now known as "The Scooter".

·   Crows have the largest cerebral hemispheres, relative to
body size, of any avian family.

·   Martha's Vineyard once had its own dialect of Sign
Language. One deaf person arrived in 1692 and after that
there was a relatively large genetically deaf population that
had their own particular dialect of sign language. From 1692-
1910 nearly all hearing people on the island were bilingual
in sign language and English.

·   Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.

·   Hugh "Ward Cleaver" Beaumont was an ordained minister.

·   Sir Isaac Newton was an ordained priest in the Church of
England.

·   St. Bernard is the patron saint of skiers.

·   The Old English word for "sneeze" is "fneosan."

·   John Lennon's first girlfriend was named Thelma Pickles.

·   According to the ceremonial customs of Orthodox Judaism,
it is officially sundown when you cannot tell the difference
between a black thread and a red one.

·   A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a
second.

·   Woodpecker scalps, porpoise teeth and giraffe tails have
all been used as money.

·   Cyano-acrylate glues (Super glues) were invented by
accident. The researcher was trying to make optical coating
materials, and would test their properties by putting them
between two prisms and shining light through them. When he
tried the cyano-acrylate, he couldn't get the prisms apart

·   Most of the little schoolhouses in the U.S. of
yesteryear were painted red because red was the least
expensive paint color.

·   Elizabeth I of England suffered from anthophobia, a fear
of roses.

·   Almost half the bones in your body are in your hands and
feet.

·   A flamingo can eat only when its head is upside down.

·   Dalmatian dogs are born pure white, they don't start
getting spots until they are three or four days old.

·   The growth rate of some bamboo plants can reach three
feet (91.44 cm) per day.

·   The Los Angeles Rams were the first U.S. football team
to introduce emblems on their helmets.

·   The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.

·   The average garden variety caterpillar has 248 muscles
in its head.

·   An elephant can be pregnant for up to two years.

·   The two quickest goals scored in the NHL were three
seconds apart.

·   Dartboards are made out of horsehairs.

·   Your left lung is smaller than your right lung to make
room for your heart.
·   'Crack' gets it name because it crackles when you smoke
it.

·   (This useless fact is dedicated, with love, to A.G.)

·   Heroin is the brand name of morphine once marketed by
Bayer.

·   Marijuana is Spanish for 'Mary Jane.'

·   One of the many Tarzans, Karmuela Searlel, was mauled to
death on the set by a raging elephant.

·   Slinkys were invented by an airplane mechanic; he was
playing with engine parts and realized the possible secondary
use of one of the springs.

·   U.S. Interstates which go north-south are numbered
sequentially starting from the west with odd numbers, and
Interstates which go east-west are numbered sequentially
starting from the south with even numbers.

·   Today's cattle are descended from two species: wild
aurochs -- fierce and agile herd animals that populated

·   Asia, North Africa and Europe -- and eotragus -- an
antelope-like, Asian forest creature.

·   Ballroom dancing is a major at Brigham Young University.

·   Professional ballerinas use about twelve pairs of toe
shoes per week. The anteater, aardvark, spiny anteater
(echidna), and scaly anteater (pangolin) are completely
unrelated - in fact, the closest relatives to anteaters are
sloths and armadillos, the closest relative to the spiny
anteater is the platypus, and the aardvark is in an order all
by itself.

·   There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.

·   Octopi have gardens.

·   The Beatles song "Martha My Dear" was written by Paul
McCartney about his sheepdog Martha.

·   "Ever think you're hearing something in a song, but
they're really singing something else? The word formis-heard
lyrics is 'mondegreen,' and it comes from a folk song in the
'50's. The singer was actually singing "They slew the Earl of
Morray and laid him on the green," but this came off sounding
like 'They slew the Earl of Morray and Lady Mondegreen.'"

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

·   The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old
English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife
with anything wider than your thumb.

·   The youngest letters in the English language are "j,"
"v" and "w."

·   The Australian $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 notes are made
out of plastic.

·   Cranberry Jello is the only jello flavor that comes from
real fruit, not artificial flavoring.

·   The oldest exposed surface on earth is New Zealand's
south island.

·   John Lennon's assassin was carrying a copy of "The
Catcher in the Rye" when he shot the famous Beatle in 1980.

·   Don MacLean's song "American Pie" was written about
Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens. All three
were on the same plane that crashed.

·   A game of pool is referred to as a "frame."

·   Impotence is legal grounds for divorce in 24 American
states.

·   The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp
paper.

·   Some biblical scholars believe that Aramaic (the
language of the ancient Bible) did not contain an easy way

·   to say "many things" and used a term which has come down
to us as 40. This means that when the bible -- in many places
-- refers to "40 days," they meant many days.

·   101 Dalmatians and Peter Pan (Wendy ) are the only two
Disney cartoon features

·   with both parents that are present and don't die
throughout the movie.

·   The Soviet Sukhoi-34 is the first strike fighter with a
toilet in it.

·   They Might Be Giants is the first modern band with an
Accordion and a Glockenspiel

·   Napoleon constructed his battle plans in a sandbox.

·   'Strengths' is the longest word in the English language
with just one vowel.

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

·   One of the longest English words that can be typed using
the top row of a typewriter (allowing multiple uses of
letters) is 'typewriter.'

·   When a giraffe's baby is born it falls from a height of
six feet, normally without being hurt.

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