Bogus trivia list

From what I remember they had seperate beds.

maybe. only cause not many people live there.

what’s wilderness? plus you have to remember Canada, tons of “wilderness” there.

this is pretty easy to believe, bag of food costs around 20 bucks and lasts me around 2 months or so. plus all the vet costs etc. got no real proof but sounds good.

I guess it depends on who defines a National Monument. I don’t know for sure but I don’t think that they fall under the NPS.

Guess golf and soccer don’t count as professonal? Golf is played for 33-34 weeks a year with no brakes until around now.

I’ve heard this before, but I think it was in a book.

In all my time in England I never ordered a Quart.

Actaully they believe that golf as invented by people hitting pebbles around the cattle to pass time.

guess some people didn’t see he had address this one.

According to this site, the youngest mother on record was 5 years 7 months old, in Peru in 1939. (I have heard this record cited previously.) IIRC, the father was a much older cousin. The site says the oldest father on record was 12, in England in 1998. So it would seem item #9 is incorrect at least as far as the age of the father. (I assume the factoid means the youngest couple to produce a child, not just the youngest ages of a father or mother.)

I’m pretty sure that he wrote it on a wooden fence, using whitewash.

Wait a minute. Don’t these two statements seems to contradict each other? Were the whistles “baked” into the pints, or the quarts? Wouldn’t it be easier to keep patrons in line by not allowing them to have noisemakers as beverage containers?

Regarding Mark Twain and the typewriter, it appears that Twain himself made the claim in his autobiography. Twain remembered the first manuscript as being “Tom Sawyer,” but it may actually have been Life on the Mississippi.

I wonder if there were any of those sports that played during the days following the events of September 11th when MLB and NFL halted all of their games?

And truly… why don’t the count golf? After all, it is considered a professional sport.

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Edward The Head *
**

**

You know, they say that 5/4ths of the population don’t understand fractions…

:smiley:

I love these kinds of threads. If I might summarize…

  1. FALSE (OP)

  2. FALSE (OP)

  3. FALSE (zut)

  4. TRUE (Colibri)

  5. TRUE (Colibri)

  6. FALSE (Colibri)

  7. FALSE (Colibri)

  8. TRUE, PROBABLY (Colibri)

  9. PARTLY TRUE (RealityChuck)

  10. TRUE, SOMEWHAT (Ironikinit)

  11. TRUE (OP)

  12. FALSE, PROBABLY (tc)

  13. FALSE (Ethilrist, Spirtle, DrMatrix)

  14. UNKNOWN (Mystery Dog)

  15. FALSE (ElvisL1ves)

  16. FALSE (KneadToKnow)

  17. FALSE (Floater)

  18. FALSE (zut)

  19. UNKNOWN (tc)

  20. FALSE (RealityChuck)

  21. FALSE (RealityChuck)
    That leaves:

  22. Men can read smaller print than women can; women can hear better.

  23. The state with the highest percentage of people who walk to work: Alaska

  24. The cost of raising a medium-size dog to the age of eleven: $6,400

  25. The average number of people airborne over the US any given hour: 61,000

  26. Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

  27. Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn’t added until 5 years later.

  28. In Shakespeare’s time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes when you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase goodnight, sleep tight".

  29. Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim or handle of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. “Wet your whistle” is the phrase inspired by this practice.

Shoot. Please ignore all those links. I’m an idiot.

From this site.

According to this site, the Declaration of Independence signing fact is slightly true. The original printed document WAS signed by just the two mentioned Forefathers, only later was the ceremonial document found in the National Archives signed by them all (including the big 'ol John Hancock). Could not find anything about the five years later business, though it sounds fishy to me.

Not according to this.

http://www.xrefer.com/entry/638582

I second that (why haven’t I thought of it earlier?). Beer is ordered by pint and half pint. As is stated in the Weights and Measures Act: “Draught beer must be sold in half pints and multiples thereof”.

interesting to see Snopes treat this as false. Over here in the UK this rhyme is generally accepted as being about the plague. The words over here are slightly different to the ones mentioned, with the second last line being Atishoo, atishoo. I have seen tv programmes by several historians where this has been repeated as fact. Very confusing indeed.

As for the beer in pints and quarts. They are both imperial measurements so the fact that you don’t buy a quart of beer these days imo doesn’t make this necessarily untrue.

I’d have to agree with sanjak about this. The English version which I know is:

*Ring a ring of roses,
a pocket full of posies.
Atishoo, atishoo, we all fall down.

We take a pinch of snuff and we all jump up!*

Now - this seems to link all too directly with it being about the plague - snuff apparently another thing (other than posies) that ‘helped’ keep plague away.

One would imagine that the English version of the rhyme would be the more accurate if we accept that it is pertaining to the 1665(ish) Black Death in London. (Probably the most important “factette” to question in this particular scenario.)

Perhaps one could suggest that this version of the rhyme has been altered in more recent centuries to ‘fit’ with the plague. But God knows why someone would do this.

Again, although Snopes clearly is a fantastic resource, I’ve heard this too many times on documentaries, and read it too many times for me to believe that Snopes is definitive on this one.

It’s not just Snopes who thinks it bogus.

http://www.ualberta.ca/~imunro/versions.html

http://www.gbalc.org/MotherGooseSociety/rhymes/ringaround.html

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/3041/rosie.html (this has its own, very weird, alternative explanation.)

http://www.bikwil.zip.com.au/Vintage14/Ring-a-Ring-o’-Roses.html

The rough impression one gets from a Google search is that both explanations are now equally prevalent. The non-plague theory seems to derive from Iona and Peter Opie (eds.), The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951), which is, it has to be said, still widely regarded as the definitive reference work on the subject.

And how many times have you read that Millard Fillmore was the first to install a bathtub in the White House? Repetition of a legend does not make it true.

Cecil actually discussed this, but he didn’t answer it. Yes, beds were once made of rope, but that doesn’t mean the phrase has anything to do with it.

According to “Listening to America” by Stuart Berg Flexner: “As they had done in England, early colonists bid each other ‘good night,’ ‘sleep soundly,’ ‘have a good night,’ and ‘God give you a good night.’ Our American admonition ‘sleep tight’ became common in the 1880s, as did our breezier ‘nighty-night’ (1888)…”

According to this: http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-sle1.htm the phrase is even newer, dating from the 20th century.

I think you have to put this down as bogus.

The same site also tackles this. They point out that:

  1. No such cup has ever been found
  2. “Whistle” is a slang term for throat.

Bogus.

You don’t have to believe them just because they’re snopes.com, of course. But read the details of their research before you judge! It’s quite clear that (a) the rhyme dates from the 19th century, not the 12th or 13th, and (b) the ‘plague’ interpretation is a modern invention. If you don’t agree, then read the details of their argument at http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/rosie.htm and tell us what they got wrong-but don’t just say that you’ve heard a lot of people say they disagree and therefore you don’t trust the Mikkelsons’ research!

Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (see entry for “dry”) confirms that “whistle” is slang for “throat.”

Definitely bogus.