useless fact-athon!!

[Nanu]

Over the years, I have discovered that useless facts are very good for starting conversations in social events, and thus I have filled my head with endless amounts of utterly useless facts in order to be prepared and never encounter an uncomfortable silence in said events.

I have looked far and wide for useless facts all over the world in search of the perfect one. The perfection of a useless fact is measured in it's ability to contain no possible knowledge, or any possible use what so ever, yet for some unknown reason it is still very interesting.

The doping community I figure is a perfect place to learn more useless facts in my never ending quest to come up with the perfect one, so I have created this post to hear everyone’s favorite useless fact, starting with my own:

The longest word you can type on a typewriter using only one row of keys is "typewriter"

and also:

The last year an official execution was carried out in France using the Guillotine was 1974

feel free to add your own favorites

[Syntropy]

a flea can jump 260 times its body length.
rubber bands last longer if they are refrigerated
the male preying mantis is unable to inseminate the female until it is decapitated. Talk about a once in a lifetime sexual experience.
Giraffes, while their tongues may be 18" long and prehensile (yes, my good friend Giraffe, I do pay attention), have no vocal cords.
And; most bizarrely: Texas' Department of Criminal Justice posts last meals of death row inmates on its website.

[biqu]

Originally posted by Nanu
The longest word you can type on a typewriter using only one row of keys is "typewriter".

Other possibilities for the QWERTY keyboard, each ten letters long, and confined to the top row, are:

perpetuity
prerequire
proprietor
repertoire
repetitory

On the Dvorak keyboard, I can beat ten letters without leaving the home row. For example: destinations (12 letters).

[Derleth]

This sentence is false.

This sentence no verb.

The Intel 8086's NOP instruction was 0x90.

[Wolfian]

Catherine the Great was not a Russian and her name wasn't origanally Catherine. She was a member of German royalty named Sofia (I think).

The melody of the alma mater of Syracuse University is also the melody of the alma maters of Cornell, Shippenburg, the Citadel, Michigan State, and Clemson to name a few.

The Cairn terrier comes in every color except for white. A white Cairn is a West Highland Terrier.

[green_bladder]

Coconuts kill more people each year than sharks do.

[Vastard]

Armadillos give birth to quadruplets.

The first time all of the Seven Sisters colleges had female presidents was 1978.

[Pebbles131]

You cant lick your elbow

[fizzygoodmakefeelnice]

You can't lick your eye

[Khadaji]

A Perfect number is a number whose sum of proper divisors equals itself. The first perfect number is 6 (1, 2, 3)

The 4th perfect number 8128

[Q.E.D.]

There are 119 ridges around the edge of a U.S. quarter.

[Annie-Xmas]

The longest word you can type only using one hand is "stewardesses." A close second is the first show composed of ABBA tunes ABBACADABRA. Which is also a useless fact-athon in itself.

[Fretful Porpentine]

Odd things you learn in grad school:

One of the bestsellers in Shakespeare's day was a Puritan treatise entitled "The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven" -- by Arthur Dent. Douglas Adams later claimed never to have heard of the man.

Sir Walter Raleigh had a cousin named Butshead Gorges. Spain once had a king called Henry the Impotent.

A sixteenth-century poet named Barnabe Barnes wrote a rather bizarre sonnet sequence in which the speaker fantasizes about raping his lady-love as she rides backward on a goat. In real life, Barnes was accused of trying to murder a man with a poisoned lemon.

A man known as Roland Le Fartere received a land grant from England's Edward III for giving "a leap, a whistle, and a fart" before the king.

[ivylass]

It is impossible to keep your eyes open when you sneeze.

Babies are born with only half a brain. Their neural pathways don't become connected unti a few months after birth.

[ivylass]

Oh, one more...the opposite sides of a die always add up to seven.

[Zeldar]

The longest single-syllable English language word is *strengths.*

Rats can't vomit.

There are many exceptions to the "i before e except after c" rule.

The only thing that all *living* human beings share is birth.

Every living person's ancestry goes "all the way back."

[green_bladder]

Originally posted by fizzygoodmakefeelnice
You can't lick your eye

Unless you're a giraffe, of course.

[Mama Tiger]

The only word in the English language with the combination of letters U-F-A is manufacture.

[jesleigh]

Dolphins are the only other animals that have sex for pleasure

It took three blows to chop off Mary Queen of Scots' head

Anne Boylen (I think), one of King Henry's wives, had three nipples

Native Americans where considered savages by colonists becuase they bathe religiously (so I've been told, never seen it written though)

I'm full of 'em, I had a very interesting Western Civ class

[Second Guest]

While scientists at the Geodetic Survey have stopped calculating the centers of land masses due to the imprecise nature of such an undertaking, the geographical center of the lower 48 states (not taking into account the curvature of the Earth) is believed to be in the middle of a hog farm just outside of Lebanon, Kansas.

[bouv]

Originally posted by jesleigh
Dolphins are the only other animals that have sex for pleasure

What about monkies and other primates? I'm could of sworn those little buggers just love sex as much as we do (Hell, maybe even more.)

[Ruffian]

Let's start with my equine-related factoids:

Horses cannot vomit.

True albinism does not exist in horses.

Contrary to urban legend, horses will not run to a burning barn. That myth is based on the fact that often-enough-times in a barn fire, horses can be difficult to remove because they're panicked, and fear leaving the safety of "home."

Arabian horses (like my mare) have one fewer vertebrae than other breeds.

Horses cannot breathe through their mouths.

Other miscellaneous trivia:

While taking the considerable amount of time required for swallowing their prey, snakes breathe through a sort of anatomical snorkel called a Jacob's Organ.

IIRC, elephants have the longest gestation period at 20 months.

Hmm...maybe I should stop here. For now.

[The Physiognomist]

Originally posted by bouv
What about monkies and other primates? I'm could of sworn those little buggers just love sex as much as we do (Hell, maybe even more.)

Bonobos are considered to have sex solely for pleasure as well. I think other apes are lucky enough to escape the distinction, although there are relevant records of female chimps breaking new grounds in creative tool use.

[Daniel]

There are 2,500,000 rivets in the Eiffel Tower

[nealla]

Joe Walsh appears in the original "Blues Brothers" movie.

[Tony Montana]

If all the mined (jewelry, bars,coins,etc) gold in the world was purified and melted into one single block, the block would measure only 60'x60'x60' (cube)

No cite.

[Q.E.D.]

It takes 43 days to build a Boeing 747.

[Baker]

If Elizabeth II is still queen in just twelve years, she will be the longest reigning British monarch, beating out her great-great grandmother Queen Victoria.

Given that her mother lived to be a hundred, and Liz is only 76, I would say she has a shot at the title.

[NoClueBoy]

There are no muscles in your hand.

[Q.E.D.]

Originally posted by NoClueBoy
There are no muscles in your hand.

Not true.

[Trigonal Planar]

By the time you're 60, you'll have spent 5 years waiting in lines.

[Blonde]

The average person spends two weeks of their life kissing.

[NoClueBoy]

My hands don't look like that! I got skin.



[movie line]

By the time the average American male is 40, he has 5 pounds of undigested red meat in his bowels.

[/movie line]




A kitten's head will fit into my mouth.


Soylent Green is... ah, never mind.



Dogs can't whistle.

[Cat Whisperer]

If a human beings eyes were the same size as a cat's eyes in proportion to their faces, our eyes would be the size of baseballs. Cool.

[Strychnos]

Mills Darden of North Carolina is the only man in history who is both among the 10 tallest men ever and the 10 heaviest men ever, arguably the biggest human being who ever lived. 1020 lbs / 7,5+ feet

[Otto]

A duck's quack doesn't echo.

Ow! Stop hitting me!

Just trying to get it out of the way before someone who actually thinks this is true posts it

[Davebear]

Originally posted by green_bladder
Unless you're a giraffe, of course.

Or a gecko. (Some, not all, species.)

Originally posted by Ruffian
While taking the considerable amount of time required for swallowing their prey, snakes breathe through a sort of anatomical snorkel called a Jacob's Organ.

Sorry. I'm impressed you know about the Jacobsen's Organs, but that's incorrect. It's the glottis (trachea) that they can protrude, and breathe through, while swallowing. The Jacobsen's Organ is an organ of scent, but unrelated to breathing.

[Johnny Bravo]

Originally posted by Zeldar

The only thing that all *living* human beings share is birth.

What about the fact that they'll die one day? Or that they breath oxygen? Or a million other biological facts?

[Ruffian]

Well I'm a big dork. Okay, maybe just a little dork. This is what happens when all the snake books are packed away (moving them into a new classroom) and I don't think about internet searching. Damned hazy memory. Thanks for the clarification, Davebear. Soooooo...let's go with this (and I have my corn snake manual right in front of me, so I'm not going by a hazy memory again):

Corn snakes have 3 different skin pigments (red, yellow, black), whereas we humans have only one (black/melanin).

Amelanistic/albino produces white mammals because it is an absence of the black pigment, melanin. But in corn snakes, "taking away black leaves plenty of dazzling color." It is because of this wider variety of skin pigments that corn snakes can come in the reptilian rainbow that they do, thanks to selective, domestic breeding.

[SnoopyFan]

The most common day to be born is October 5th.
The least common is May 22nd.

[if6was9]

Jimi Hendrix was in the 101st Aiborne
Dirtiest thing ever said on TV: "Gee Ward, you were mighty hard on the Beaver last night."
On a Top-40 hit: "Tighten up on my organ now!"
A baseball has 131 stitches
SNAFU means Situation Normal, All Fucked Up
Kent Brockman's real name is Kenny Brocklestein

[Flamsterette_X]

There is a town in Texas called Ding Dong. In 1990, the population was only twenty-two people.

[moejuck]

There are no rhymes in the English Language for Month, Purple, Orange, or Silver.

Barbie's last name is Roberts.

It took 214 crates to ship the Statue of Liberty to the U.S.

The three notes in the famous N.B.C. triad are G, E, and C used because NBC was originally owned by the General Electric Corporation.

R2D2 was named for the abbreviation of Reel Two, Day Two.

HAL, from 2001: A Space Odyssey, was a spoof on IBM, each letter in HAL being one previous to the letters in IBM.

It takes an average of 1 hour to boil an ostrich egg.

There are an average of 1,250 "O's" in a can of Spaghettios.

The longest sausage ever made was 68 feet in length.

The largest male waist ever measured was 118 inches around. (Make sure you read as waist, not waste!)

And just for fun, You can't lick the back of your head.

[Baldwin]

It is impossible to keep your eyes open when you sneeze.

Not true.

By the time you're 60, you'll have spent 5 years waiting in lines.

Bullshit. That's an average of two hours a day, every day of those 60 years.

HAL, from 2001: A Space Odyssey, was a spoof on IBM, each letter in HAL being one previous to the letters in IBM.

Arthur Clarke denies this, and I tend to believe him. HAL, as I recall, stands for either "Heuristically designed Algorithm" or simply "Heuristic Algorithm".

[Duderdude2]

It's the latter Baldwin.

[saramamalana]

Cat pee glows under blacklight.

Cats have over 100 vocal sounds. (thanks, Snapple facts!)

Flamingoes are pink from all the shrimp they eat. (thanks again!)

A golf ball has 336 dimples on it (there's a specific word for that dimple, isn't there?)

Someone mentioned earlier that "strengths" is the longest one-syllable word. So is "screeched."

Oh, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember hearing once that the Eiffel Tower grows and shrinks roughly 6 inches each year due to the expansion/contraction of the metal in heat and cold.

[jesleigh]

Originally posted by bouv
What about monkies and other primates? I'm could of sworn those little buggers just love sex as much as we do (Hell, maybe even more.)

Here is the source where I got that tid bit

[Reeder]

Spam..the email kind..got it's name from "The Spam Song" by Monty Python.

[IUHomer]

Babies are not really born with "half a brain". All the parts are there, its just over time you develop more interneurons between different parts. This is hardly the same as "half a brain"

Willard Scott was the first Ronald McDonald (in a sense). Ray Kroc and Walt Disney served in the same army troop in WWI. (Hey, I'm reading Fast Food Nation)

Ken Norton, Jr. is the only NFL player to play on three straight SB champions. (49ers and Cowboys).

Tiger Woods is the perfect name for one of the greatest golfers in history. OK, thats opinion, but come on, could he have a better sounding and more descriptive name?

[hebesphenomegacorona]

The Straight dope kicks ass.