A while back I tried to start a rumour that Slim Whitman was asked to tour with the Beatles as John Lennon’s replacement in a series of 1981 memorial concerts.
That never took off for some reason.
Sharks are technically mammals.
If you choose a 6/49 or 7/49 format lottery number with more than four consecutive numbers, e.g. 6-7-8-9-10-36. the ticket is invalid, and you can legally ask for a refund if the ticket doesn’t win.
Joseph Stalin was obsessed with cats; upon his death his residences housed over 1,400 cats, and two dozen people were employed to care for them.
Although the state legislature and most of the apparatus of government in Massachusetts are housed in Boston, Massachusetts law actually states that its capital is New Bedford. Schoolchildren are taught that it’s Boston simply because that’s the de facto, not legal, capital.
Babe Ruth actually hit 699 home runs, not 714; the number was miscounted due to sloppiness in early record keeping, as his World Series homers were accidentally added to his regular season total. This was discovered after Hank Aaron hit his 700th home run, but before his 715th, and so was kept under wraps so baseball could capitalize on the publicity of Aaron’s breaking the “record.”
Commerically available earbuds and headphones cannot replicate the sound of kittens mewling.
A solar eclipse can be safely and clearly viewed a quarter-inch thick plate of pure aluminum.
74.3% of the people who have viewed this thread have birthmarks on their butts.
A rider in the new tax cut extension in the US says that people who made between $43,247.12 and $43,248.14 this year will never have to pay Federal income tax again.
There are more marsupials in Kansas than there are in Tasmania.
Wow. You’re good.
Male pandas are legally deaf.
Until chocolate ice cream was discovered to be more popular than pistachio, Neapolitan ice cream was equal parts strawberry, vanilla, and pistachio, after the colors of the Italian flag.
Nipsy Russell was briefly one of Gladys Knight’s Pips. He was let go early in her 1973 tour because during performances of the song Neither One of Us (Wants to be the First to Say Goodbye), he simply couldn’t remember to pronounce “neither” with a long E, rather than a long I
Dammit, one of my favourite things to do is tell people outrageous things with a completely deadpan face, but I can’t remember any of them!
I want to live in the world that you people are creating. 
One of Steve Martin’s early jobs was writer for “Elastic Man” comics.
Nero, the Roman emperor’s nickname was februa, meaning “feeble mind”. He attempted to have a month named after him in (like Julius and Augustus) but was so widely hated the Romans renamed February just to spite his memory.
Australians have 23 different words for vomit. The coinage of 10 of them are officially credited to cricket legend Don Bradman.
Marlboro cigarette packaging was inspired by factions fighting the Russian Civil War, which is why Lights are white and Reds are, well, red. The brand was originally intended to be marketed to women but failed. Before they settled on the now-famous cowboy advertisements, they were going to go after left-leaning intellectuals.
The French government seriously considered competing with the USSR and USA in the Space Race until De Gaulle pointed out what a stupid idea it was.
Gene Autry wrote the Joni Mitchell hit “Big Yellow Taxi”.
When asked why he peed out his office window, Grover Cleveland replied, “You don’t want me outside the office peeing in.”
On the World Almanac’s list of “1001 Inventions That Changed the World,” wax lips are number 426.
“New England Style” frankfurter buns originated as a prank and were put on sale by mistake.
Tiny Tim discovered his distinctive vocal timbre when, as a chemistry lab assistant, he absent-mindedly placed his scrotum in a centrifuge.
Due to a treaty dating to the Middle Ages, the Holy See is required to pay Aachen tribute amounting to two fertile heifers or six dozen white geese. In practice, this is usually remitted in the form of plenary indulgence, meaning Germans are practically never in a state of sin and, therefore, very rarely take confession.
It is an error to refer to the English as British: The term ‘English’ refers to the Angles, a tribe of Germans that invaded long after the British, a group of Brythonic Celts, settled on the British Isles.
Japan still owns one of the Aleutian Islands. After the Second World War, important records were destroyed in a freak fire and the Department of the Interior failed to get a full and complete accounting of the islands to the people drafting the peace treaty by the deadline. Therefore, Japan legally handed back every island except one. Which one is still a matter of some dispute by historians.
Snail oil would be more valuable than whale oil if snails produced any oil.
Most weeds are Federally protected, making it a crime to destroy them. The fine is figured into the cost of weed-killers and implements such as roto-tillers.
The stir-fry is completely unknown to authentic Chinese cuisine; woks are used as farming implements and, in former times, were sharpened to make fearsome weapons of war.
It is an offense to milk a spider while high on mescaline in the town of Provo, Utah.
The term ‘Parisian’ is highly offensive.
Category theory was invented by mathematicians attempting to create a more efficient way to factor quintics.
Some insects reproduce via traumatic insemination: The male uses his torture phallus to puncture the carapace of the female and deposit his semen. This is not considered rape in any state in the Union.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!
(Seriously I haven’t LOL’d at anything on the Dope like this in a while!)
Stephen King’s The Shawshank Redemption & The Green Mile are based on his experiences as a prison guard, a part-time job he held while in college.
[nitpick]“Februa” survives in such uncommon English words as “febrile”, and is related to “fever”. Nero was of ill health in general, not feeble-minded specifically. [/nitpick]
Pugs were intentionally bred to resemble pigs.
From the old days of drafting curves by hand…
What makes the French curve special is that it is the only curve on which you can find a tangent at any point along it (Unless its one of the cheap models that has a perfect corner at one point on it).
I actually got a large group of freshman physics students to believe that one once.
Argh! I can’t remember any of the ones I’ve told! I love doing this too.
Almonds are toxic to chipmunks.
Yule logs were originally cut into two pieces. One half was coated in animal blood and ritually buried, and the other was burned.
Theodore Geisel wrote his children’s books under the pen name Dr. Seuss because he had earlier (racier) doodles published in Playboy under his real name.
Atheism is the worlds fastest growing religion.
Damn near whooshed me.
I expected to get a laugh with this at work today, and was surprised to have it accepted at face value:
I’m looking forward to Mel Gibson’s Nativity of the Christ, due for Christmas 2012. It’s going to be in the same vein as his Passion - full two hour running time, Aramaic and Hebrew dialogue, and most of the action consisting of a lot of blood, tears, and screaming.