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It costs more to buy a new car today in the United States than it cost Christopher Columbus to equip and undertake three voyages to and from the New World.
Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them use to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired."
In ancient China and certain parts of India, mouse meat was considered a great delicacy.
The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
During Abraham Lincoln's campaign for the presidency, a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat named Valentine Tapley from Pike County, Missouri, swore that he would
never shave again if Abe were elected. Tapley kept his word and his chin whiskers went unshorn from November 1860 until he died in 1910, attaining a length of twelve feet six inches.
Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than for the US Treasury.
On a Canadian two-dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament Building is an American flag.
Non-dairy creamer is flammable.
There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.
Experiments conducted in Germany and at the University of Southampton in England show that even mild and incidental noises cause the pupils of the eyes to dilate. It is believed that this is why surgeons, watchmakers, and others who perform delicate manual operations are so bothered by noise. The sounds cause their pupils to change focus and blur their vision.
The coastal town of Picoaza, Ecuador, was in the midst of a very boring election campaign when a foot deodorant manufacturer came out with the slogan "VOTE FOR ANY CANDIDATE, BUT IF YOU WANT WELL-BEING AND HYGIENE, VOTE FOR PULVAPIES." Then on the eve of the voting, a leaflet reading: "FOR MAYOR: HONORABLE PULVAPIES" was widely distributed. In one of the great embarrassments of democracy, the voters of Picoaza elected the foot powder by a clear majority; Pulvapies also ran well in outlying districts.
For a while Frederic Chopin, the composer and pianist, wore a beard on only one side of his face. "It does not matter," he explained. "My audience sees only my right side."
The star Antares is 60,000 times larger than our sun. If our sun were the size of a softball, the star Antares would be as large as a house.
If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.
Birds do not sleep in their nests. They may occasionally nap in them, but they actually sleep in other places.
In Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift described the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, giving their exact size and speeds of rotation. He did this more
than 100 years before either moon was discovered.
Lightning strikes the earth 100 times every second.
The average lead pencil will draw a line 35 miles long or write approximately 50,000 English words.
More than 2 billion pencils are manufactured each year in the United States. If these were laid end to end they would circle the world nine times.
A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.
A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
Ralph Graves entered a doughnut shop with a gun and demanded money from the cashier. A customer recognized him, however, when Graves lifted up a corner of
his pillowcase mask to find his way out the door. Graves had forgotten to cut eyeholes.
Crocodiles and alligators are surprisingly fast on land. Although they are rapid, they are not agile; so if you ever find yourself chased by one, run in a
zigzag line. You'll lose him or her every time.
A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
A cat's urine glows under a blacklight.
One-fourth of the world's population lives on less than $200 a year. Ninety million people survive on less than $75 a year.
Americans on the average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.
There is approximately one chicken for every human being in the world.
Every night, wasps bite into the stem of a plant, lock their mandibles (jaws) into position, stretch out at right angles to the stem, and, with legs dangling, fall asleep.
In the 1940s, the FCC assigned television's Channel 1 to mobile services (two-way radios in taxicabs, for instance) but did not renumber the other channel
assignments. That is why your TV set has channels 2 and up, but no channel 1.
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
Amount American Airlines saved in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first class: $40,000.
Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories per hour.
More people are killed by a champagne corks than poisonous spiders.
During the time of Peter the Great, any Russian man who wore a beard was required to pay a special tax.
In eighteenth-century English gambling dens, there was an employee whose only job was to swallow the dice if there was a police raid.
Caesar salad has nothing to do with any of the Caesars. It was first concocted in a bar in Tiajuana, Mexico, in the 1920's.
Martin Van Buren was the first President born as a citizen of the U.S.
Issac Asimov is the only author having a book in every major category of the Dewey Decimal System.
February 1965 is the only month in history that had no full moon.
Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people do.
Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
Smartest dogs: 1) border collie 2) poodle 3) golden retriever.
Starfishes haven't got brains.
State with the highest percentage of people who walk to work: Alaska.
The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds. That makes the catfish rank #1 for animal having the most taste buds.
The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "It's A Wonderful Life".
The flea can jump 350 times its body length. That is like a human jumping the length of a football field.
The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.
Every second, Americans collectively eat one hundred pounds of chocolate.
A fetus develops fingerprints at eighteen weeks.
There are approximately fifty Bibles sold each minute across the world.
The strike of the eagle talon is so powerful that its force is twice that of a rifle bullet.
Wild turkeys can run at speeds of up to 25 miles per hour.
A chicken once had its head cut off and survived for over eighteen months, headless.
A chicken loses its feathers when it becomes stressed.
The real "white elephant" (the kind with a trunk) is a pale pachyderm that has long been an object of veneration in India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Myanmar.
Too revered to be a beast of burden, the white elephant earned a reputation as a burdensome beast, one that required constant care and feeding but never
brought a single cent (or paisa or satang or pya) to its owner. One story has it that the kings of Siam (the old name for Thailand) gave white elephants as
gifts to those they wished to ruin, hoping that the cost of maintaining the voracious but sacred mammal would drive its new owner to the poorhouse.
Until the nineteenth century, solid blocks of tea were used as money in Siberia.
When glass breaks, the cracks move faster than 3,000 miles per hour.
One of the advantages of printing different denominations of currency on different sizes of paper are the blind can count more easily. The US is one of
the few countries that print all denominations on same size paper.
Only 6% of US postal mails are personal letters.
Winton Surf is known as the father of the internet.
In the native language of Australia, the word "Kangaroo" means "I don't know."
Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to slow the film down so you could see his moves. That's the opposite of the norm.
Barbie Doll's full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.
Bloodhounds have been used since the 1600's for tracking criminals.
In 2002, dogs killed more people in the U.S. than the Great White shark has killed in the past 100 years.
Pixie, a Siberian Husky, gave birth to a bright green puppy.
The name of the Taco Bell dog is Gidget.
In 1864, a Quebec farmer found a frog inside a hailstone.
In eighteenth-century England, women's wigs were sometimes 4 feet high. These remarkable headdresses were dusted with flour and decorated with stuffed birds, replicas of gardens, plates of fruit, or even model ships. Sometimes the wigs were so elaborate that they were worn continuously for several months. They were matted with lard to keep them from coming apart, which made mice and insects a constant problem. Special pillows had to be constructed to hold
these giant creations, and rat-resistant caps made of wire were common. The wig craze died out quite suddenly in 1795 when a hair-powder tax made their
upkeep too expensive.
In 1400 B.C., it was fashionable for a rich Egyptian woman to place a large cone of scented grease on top of her head and keep it there all day. As the
day wore on, the grease melted and dripped down over her body, covering her skin with an oily, glistening sheen and bathing her clothes in fragrance.
Marie de Medici, a member of that famous Italian family and a 17th-century queen of France, had expensive tastes in clothes. One special dress was outfitted with 39,000 tiny pearls and 3,000 diamonds and cost the equivalent of twenty million dollars at the time it was made in 1606. She wore it once.
Wood frogs can be frozen solid and then thawed, and they will continue living. They use the glucose in their bodies to protect their vital organs while they
are in a frozen state.
A full grown giraffe's neck can weigh as much as 500 pounds.
A giraffe can go without water longer than a camel.
An adult giraffe's kick is so powerful that it can decapitate a lion.
A cockroach can change directions up to 25 times in a second.
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