Thursday's Useless Trivia and Facts ~ January 27, 2011

It is time again for me to fill your brain with useless facts and trivia:

1. Snails breathe through their feet.
2. 50% of lingerie purchases are returned to the store.
3. What's a scroggling? A small, runty apple left on the tree after a harvest.
4. Beavers mate for life.
5. Slow hand: How fast does the hour hand travel on a wristwatch? .00000275mph.
6. He who says it can not be done should not interrupt the person doing it. - Chinese proverb
7. Your chances of drowning are about 1 in 900.
8. Although 85% of dieters do lose weight, only 15% keep it off for longer than two years.
9. Sterling silver contains 7.5 % copper.
10. Americans use enough toilet paper each year to stretch to the Sun and back.
    

Does This Really Happen?!?!

Starbucks Has Yet Another Word For "Large"

A whole new way to annoy coffee drinkers.

We wonder how many times some form of this conversation has taken place in a Starbucks:

Sleepy Morning Customer: I'd like a coffee please.

Snotty Morning Barista: What size?

SMC: Large.

SMB: We don't have large.

SMC: [blink] What?

SMB: We don't have large.

SMC: Do you have small?

SMB: No.

SMC: You don't have small. Okay. Do you have different sizes?

SMB: Yes.

SMC: Is one of them larger than the other?

SMB: We have three sizes.

SMC: [pinches area between eyes] Okay. One of them is larger than the other two, I'm guessing.
SMB: [pause: has to think] Uh, yeah.

SMC: I'll have that one.

SMB: Which one?

SMC: Oh dear lord…

We can now add a fourth size to Tall, Grande, and Venti: Trenta. (Thankfully, word on the street is you can just ask for the "Bucket o' Coffee.")

Another piece of useless info. from :

Thursday's Useless Trivia and Facts ~ January 20, 2011

It is time again for me to fill your brain with useless facts and trivia:

MODERN WISDOM

• "No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously." - Dave Barry
• "What we swell on is who we become" - Oprah Winfrey
• "As you get older, the pickings get slimmer, but the people don't" - Carrie Fisher
• "If you're going to be able to look back on something and laugh about it, you might as well laugh about it now." - Marie Osmond
• "Oppressed groups are not, generally speaking, people who stand firmly together. No, sadly, they subdivide among themselves and fight like hell." - J.K. Rowling
• "Most things I worry about never happen anyway." - Tom Petty
• "Bad taste is simply saying the truth before it should be said." - Mel Brooks
• "The true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good." - Ann Landers
• "The less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudices." - Clint Eastwood
• "It's all right letting yourself go as long as you can get yourself back." - Mick Jagger
• "The most important things happen when you stop looking for them." - Phil Donahue
• "The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." - Alice Walker
• "If everything is under control, you are going too slow." - Mario Andretti
• "The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy
  

Thursday's Useless Trivia and Facts ~ January 13 2011

1. Chronic alcoholism shrinks the left side of the brain.
2. Survey shows: One in three British kids say their mum prefers the cat to their dad.
3. Rats are not mentioned in the Bible.
4. In Japan, you can buy Stick-on Belly-Button Cleaners. A box of six sells for $6.15.
5. The okapi is the only known relative of the giraffe (its neck is much shorter).
6. An erupting volcano can shoot ash as high as 30 miles into the atmosphere.
7. Ammonia gets its name from the Egyptian god Amun.
8. In 2004 the Russian Orthodox Church officially ruled that playing chess is not a sin.
9. The bookkeeping terms "in the red" & "in the black" come from the colors of the 12th-century abacuses.
10. New England is larger than England; New York is larger than York; New Jersey is larger than Jersey.
    

Thursday's Useless Trivia and Facts ~ January 6 2011

Laugh Lines

• "When people blow their noses, they always look into their hankies to see what came out. What do they expect to find?" - Billy Connolly
  
• "I love to sleep. It's the best of both worlds - you get to be alive...and unconscious." - Rita Rudner


• "The sign said, 'This door to remain closed at all times.' Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that defeat the purpose of a door?" - Danny McCrossan


• "Who invented the brush they leave next to the toilet? That thing hurts!" - Andy Andrews


• "Is it fair to say that there'd be less litter if blind people were given pointy sticks?" - Adam Bloom


• "I've always wanted to give birth...to kittens. It would hurt less, and when you're done, you'd have kittens!" - Betsy Salkind
  
• "My love life is like a fairy tale. Grimm." - Windy Liebman

• "I realized I was dyslexic when I went to a toga party dressed as a goat." - Marcus Brigstocke
  
• "I wish I cold play Little League now. I'd be way better than before." - Mitch Hedberg


• "I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, 'Where's the self-help section?' She said if she told me it wold defeat the purpose." - George Carlin


• "I joined Gamblers Anonymous. They gave me two-to-one odds I wouldn't make it." - Rodney Dangerfield


• "Fortunately my parents were intelligent, enlightened people. They accepted me for what I was: a punishment from God." - David Steinberg


• "If I ever had twins, I'd use one for parts." - Steven Wright

Thursday's Useless Trivia and Facts ~ December 30 2010

1. The first known phobia to be described: Hydrophobia, a fear of water, in the mid-1500s.
2. All hornets are wasps; not all wasps are hornets.
3. About 25 million meteors hit Earth's atmosphere every day.
4. Mr Donald's restaurants will buy 54,000,000 pounds of fresh apples this year.
5. At latitude 60degrees south, it is possible to sail around the world without reaching land.
6. Really? There are 127 ways to spell the last name Raleigh.
7. Relative to body size, crows have the largest brains of any bird.
8. The first Harley-Davidson motorcycle, built in 1903, used a tomato can for a carburetor.
9. Good news? Astronauts cannot burp in zero gravity, but they can still fart.
10. Alaska is the only state whose name can be typed on a single keyboard row.
    
    

Thursday's Useless Trivia and Facts ~ December 23 2010

FLUBBED HEADLINES

Unintentionally naught or just plain bizarre - but they're all real.

• Joint Chiefs Head Will Be Replaced
• Caskets Found As Workers Demolish Mausoleum
• U.S., France Agree to Mideast Truce
• Butts Swiped Toilet Paper From Court
• Man Battles to Prove He's Not Dead
• Hearing to Be Held on Statue of Liberty's Crown
• College Drinking Games Lead to Higher Blood Alcohol Levels
• Helping Hurt Children Is Reward Enough
• Man Stabbed With Fish
• DOE to do NEPA's EIS on BNFL's AMWTP at INEEL after SRA prostest
• Man Sought For Lewd Act
• Breast Augmentation Available at Moundview
• Sadness Is No.1 Reason Men And Women Cry
• Yankees Take A Walk To Tie Store
• 2 States May See Delegates Halved
• Governor, Legislators Disagree About When They Might Agree
• Meat Head Resigns
• Schools Can Expect More Students Than Thought
• Clinton Apologizes to Syphilis Victims
• 0.10 Inches of Rain Pummels Country
• Man Shot In Groin Area On Love Lane
• Volunteers Search for Old Civil War Planes
• Prisoner Serving 2000 - Year Sentence Could Face More Time
• Meeting On Open Meeting Is Closed
  

Thursday's Useless Trivia and Facts ~ December 16 2010

1. The Chinese words for "crisis" and "opportunity" are the same.
2. Where are the Mount of Jupiter and Girdle of Venus located? On the palm of your hand.
3. The longest known alligator was 19'2". It was found in Louisiana in the early 1900s.
4. The first known use of separate men's and women's bathrooms was at Parisian ball in 1739.
5. Cities take up to 2% of the Earth's surface, but consume 75% of the resources.
6. Just going through a spell? Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling doesn't believe in witchcraft.
7. During Prohibition, temperance activists tried to rewrite the Bible to remove all references to alcohol, including the fact that Jesus drank wine.
8. That's a lot of gobbling: The biggest turkey on record weighed 86 pounds.
9. Harry Houdini was buried in the coffin he used in his magic act.
10. In Caracas, Venezuela, the streets are blocked off on Christmas so people can roller-skate to church.
    
    
    

Thursday's Useless Trivia and Facts ~ December 9 2010

PRO-NUN-CI-A-TION

What are the correct pronunciations for the words below? The answers might surprise you. If you pronounce them differently, don't worry-many people do. But here is how they were orginally meant to be pronounced 50, 100, or 200 years ago - and, according to the dictionary, still should be.

• STATUS: "stay-tus"
• TRANSIENT: It has two syllables not thress, so it's "tran-shent," not "tran-zee-ent."
• APPLICABLE: The first syllable is the one that should be emphasized, as in app-lic-able, rather than app-lic-able.
• Valet: It's not a French word, so pronouncing the last syllable as "ay" is incorrect. It should be sounded as "val-it" (Another fake French word: foyer, which is pronounced "Foy-ur," not "Foy-ay")
• SPHERICAL: "sferr-i-kal," not "sfeer-i-kal."
• EITHER: "Eee-thur" or "aye-thur?"? "Eee-thur" is the preferred way. (And so is "nee-thur.")
• PRELUDE: "pray-lood" is the incorrect; the proper pronunciation is "prel-yood."
• FORTE: If you're discussing someone's "forte," as in a strength, the "e" is silent. "For-tay" is correct only if you're using it as a musical term.
• DECREASE: If you;re using it as a noun, it's de-creased. If you're using it as averb, it's de-creased.
• ERR: Rhymes with "hair?" No, it rhymes with "her."
• CARAMEL: "Kah-ruh-mull" is the original way and still the preferred way, although "Kar-mull," which was once Midwestern regional pronunciation, is also acceptable.
• GALA: "gay-luh"
• MAUVE: It once rhymed with "stove," but now the "au" is sounded as "aw."
• REGIME: The first syllable is sounded as "ray."
• JOUST: In the 13th century, it was pronounced (and spelled) like the "just."
• LONG-LIVED: Today we say the "lived" as "livd," but until the 20th century, it was pronounced "lyved."
• QUASI: Today it's often pronounced "kwah-zee," but it's more correct to say "Kway-zi."
  
  
  

Thursday's Useless Trivia and Facts ~ December 2 2010

1. There are more English-speaking people living in India than in the U.S., U.K., and Canada combined.
2. A first-class ticket for the Titanic cost more than a typical crew member would earn in 18 years.
3. Smile! Each year, Americans use 400 million tubes of toothpaste.
4. China is the world's leading exporter of artificial Christmas trees.
5. World's longest unmilitarized international border: Canada and the U.S. (5525 miles).
6. Australia's tallest mountain, Mt. Kosciuszko, and largest city, Sydney are both named for men who never visited Australia.
7. Since 1900 the average length of a wedding engagement has grown from 11 months to 16 months.
8. Only 35% of blind people were born blind.
9. 45% of Americans believe in the Devil...but only 13% of Brits. do.
10. In a single day, the average person takes about 18,000 steps.

**From Uncle John's Bathroom Reader**

Thursday's Useless Trivia and Facts ~ November 25 2010

1. Average life expectancy for English people in the 16th and 17th centuries was 39.7 years.


2. Animal fact: Octopi have three hearts.


3. Waaaaaaaah! The average newborn baby spends 113 minutes a day crying.


4. Gas fact: Cockroaches fart every 15 minutes.


5. Cool thought: If it’s 0°F today and it’s going to be twice as cold tomorrow, how cold will it be?


6. King James I cited the health hazards of smoking in his “Counterblaste to Tobacco” in 1604.


7. The first Girl Scout troop was organized in Savannah, Georgia, on March 12, 1912.


8. Robert F. Kennedy’s 11th child, Rory Elizabeth, was born six months after his death.


9. Run DMC was the first rap group to perform on TV’s “American Bandstand.”


10. The Rolling Hills Country Club in Florida was the setting for the movie Caddyshack.

**From Uncle John's Bathroom Readers**

Thursday's Useless Trivia and Facts ~ November 18 2010

1. Taco is Spanish for “plug.”


2. Don’t blink! A 30-minute cartoon may contain over 18,000 separate drawings.


3. One beehive can have as many as 80,000 bees.


4. Winston Churchill once designed greeting cards for Hallmark.


5. C.S. Lewis received more than 800 rejection letters before selling his first book.


6. In the 1850s, Americans set their watches in as many as a hundred local times.


7. Superman made his first flight in a DC comic in 1938.


8. The full name of the Simpsons character Krusty the Klown is Herschel Schmoeckel Krustofski.


9. Utah is home to the nation’s only major east-west range, the Uintas.


10. New College (now Harvard University) started out in 1636 with nine students and one instructor.

**From Uncle John's Bathroom Readers**

Thursday's Useless Trivia and Facts

1. The fastest recorded tennis serve? 153 miles per hour.



2. The woolen swimsuits that people wore at the turn of the 20th century weighed about 20 pounds when wet.



3. Australia is the only continent on Earth without an active volcano.



4. The brain of a reptile accounts for less than 1% of its body mass.



5. When it's written out as "forty," 40 is the only number whose letters are in alphabetical order.



6. In Hartford, Connecticut, it's against the law to educate a dog.



7. The ostrich is the only bird with eyelashes.



8. Studies show: English speakers say “uh” before a short pause and “um” before a long pause.



9. Obsidian—volcanic glass—is so sharp it’s still used today in cardiac and eye surgery.



10. Among mammals: the colder the climate, the shorter the legs.

**From Uncle John's Bathroom Readers**

Thursday's Useless Trivia and Facts

1. A person takes an average of 16 breaths a minute.


2. The National Park Service manages more than 16 million acres of wetlands.


3. The boots eaten by Charlie Chaplin in "The Gold Rush" (1925) were made of licorice.


4. Flamingos build their nests with mouthfuls of mud.


5. A century is about 50 million minutes long.


6. The average bra is designed to last for only 180 days of use.


7. Pigs were introduced to North America by Christopher Columbus.


8. McDonald's originally served hot dogs, not hamburgers.


9. Odds of being injured by a toilet seat in your lifetime: 1 in 6,500


10. Which part of a map is the ideo locator? The part that says "YOU ARE HERE."

**From Uncle John's Bathroom Readers**

Thursday's Useless Trivia and Facts

1. Dust from the Sahara desert has been carried by the wind as far as Chicago.
2. FBI statistic: 74% of threats against federal workers are directed at IRS employees.
3. The British government has 100,000 cats on the payroll - they work as rat-catchers.
4. Lemons and strawberries do not ripen after being picked. Avocados and bananas do.
5. Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species sold out its entire first edition (1250 copies) in one day.
6. Ex-Lax was originally called Bo-Bo's.
7. In Switzerland, a Big Mac will cost you $5.11.
8. One million dollars' worth of pennies would weigh 597,916 pounds.
9. Some butterflies' tongues are twice as long as their bodies.
10. More car model names start with the letter "C" than any other letter.

Thursday's Useless Trivia and Facts

1. The sun converts 4000000 tons of matter into energy every second.


2. Sweet smell of success: The smell of peppermint improves the concentration of office workers.


3. Wh@t? The @ symbol is 500 years old.


4. About meat? Carnivores dream more than herbivores.


5. Porshe owners are more likely to cheat on their partners than any other car owner.


6. Houseflies hum in the key of F.


7. If a chain letter was never broken, within 15 cycles the entire world would have read it.


8. Eeek! The longest one-syllable work in the English language is screeched.


9. It takes about 0.004 gallons of gas to start your car in the morning.


10. It may not look like it, but a violin contains about 70 separate pieces of wood.

Thursday's Useless Trivia and Facts

• Psycho? Alfred Hitchcock had an extreme fear of eggs.
• Barn owls snore.
• Good Luck! It is easier to find gold than to win the lottery.
• Technically speaking, coffee is a fruit juice.
• Bill Clinton is the most widely traveled president in U.S. history.
• Are you a chicken when it comes to chickens? Then you have alektorophobia.
• Charles Dicksons's character Tiny Tim was originally called Small Sam.
• A lot of kids have it: Lachanophobia - fear of vegetables.
• Melbourne, Australia, has an 8 p.m. curfew...for cats.
• Pucker up! You use 20 different muscles when you kiss.

Thursday's Useless Trivia

*The oldest cow ever recorded was a Dremon named "Big Bertha" that died 3 months shy of her 49th birthday on New Years Eve, 1993. (She died of natural causes that had nothing to do with partying on New Years if that is what your thinking!)
*A perfect game in baseball is one in which the same player pitches the entire game without allowing any player of the opposite team to reach first base by any means
*By the time you turn 70, your heart will have beat some two and a half billion times (figuring on an average of 70 beats per minute)
*The tallest as well as the heaviest horse ever recorded was a Shire gelding named "Sampson." He measured 21.2 and one half hands (7 feet 2.5 inches) and weighed 3,360 pounds!
*The average human body contains enough: iron to make a three inch nail, sulfur to kill all fleas on an average dog, carbon to make 900 pencils, potassium to fire a toy cannon, fat to make 7 bars of soap, phosphorous to make 8 match heads, and water to fill a ten gallon tank

Thursday's Useless Trivia

*An eighteenth century woman used only lard to "wash" her face and hands and lived to the age of 116
*If 80% of the human liver was removed, it could still function and would eventually restore itself to its original size
*Nearly a quarter of all human bones are found in the feet
*Human adults breath about 23000 times a day
*The hydrochloric acid in the human stomach is strong enough to disolve a nail
*The amount of carbon in the human body is enough to fill about 9000 lead pencils
*The oldest dog that has been reliably documented was an Australian cattle dog named Bluey. He was put to sleep at the age of 29 years and 5 months!
*The smallest dog in history was a tiny Yorkie from Blackburn, England. At two years of age and fully grown this little dude was an incredible 2.5 inches tall by 3.75 inches long! He weighed only 4 ounches!He was approximately the size of a matchbox
*There are 14 phalanges (finger bones) in the human hand
*The largest muscle in the human body is the buttock muscle
*The tallest dog on record was named Shamgret Danzas. He was 42 inches tall (at the shoulder!) and weighed 238 pounds

Thursday's Useless Trivia

*A cough releases an explosive charge of air that moves at speeds up to 60 miles per hour
*A fetus acquires fingerprints at the age of three months
*A fingernail or toenail takes about 6 months to grow from base to tip
*A human being loses an average of 40 to 100 strands of hair a day
*According to German researchers, the risk of heart attack is higher on Monday than any other day of the week
*After spending hours working at a computer display, look at a blank piece of white paper. It will probably appear to be pink in color
*An average human drinks about 16,000 gallons of water in a lifetime
*By age 60, most people have lost half of their taste buds
*Fingernails grow faster than toenails
*The human body transmits nerve impulses at about 90 meters a second
*In the English hospitals of the seventeenth century, childern were entitled to two gallons of beer as part of their weekly diet